Search

This introductory article presents the concept of the pseudo as a means of challenging the confidence with which many within global health approach ideas and praxis in terms of binary oppositions, such as real or fake. We argue that this confidence, in clearly discernible dichotomies, ignores the core theme inspiring this special issue: that of the ‘in-between phenomena’ – the fake-in-the-real, the authentic-in-the-inauthentic, and so forth. Instead of taking binary oppositions as stable, we examine empirical examples of continuums between polar opposites. Drawing on Popper’s discussion of pseudoscience, as theories existing between science and non-science, we approach the ambiguous, uncertain and unstable and ‘in-between’ phenomena as manifestations of pseudo global health. We argue that the pseudo enables approaches more reflective of the messiness and lack of certainty of everyday encounters with global health, while illuminating phenomena that are often kept ‘backstage’. Finally, we discuss three intersecting themes raised by the special issue articles: ideas of geography, and in particular, questions about assumed relationships between (jn)authenticity and locality; the role of methods in examining pseudo global health, and the role of power and how paying attention to areas of ambiguity can disrupt assumptions about who holds power and where power lies.

This paper centres on the roles and contributions of fieldworkers-local data-collectors in Global Health research in postcolonial contexts. It is informed by two separate ethnographies, conducted in two different East African biomedical research institutions. It discusses how common characterisations of fieldworkers as ‘low-skilled’ and ‘local’ make them attractive to research institutions in two important ways – as community-embedded data-collectors thus facilitating community participation and as being unlikely to fabricate data because they lack the skills to avoid detection. This paper questions these assumptions. It draws on Daston’s idea of the ‘scientific persona’ and Fanon’s concepts of mask-making to explore how fieldworkers construct identities and data within their liminal roles. Fieldworkers create particular pseudo-personae or masks for getting and staying employed. They dumb-down CVs and emphasise their similarities with community members in ways which are partially ‘real’ but also ‘fake’. These constructed identities provide fieldworkers with a persona that allows them to fabricate or modify data without raising suspicions. They frequently engage in practices known as ‘genuine fake’ data fabrication which is data perceived as factually correct and verifiable yet methodologically incorrect, hence it is real and fake in varying degrees. We understand the ‘pseudo’ as the blurry space between real and fake where fieldworkers construct their identities and data. Given the seemingly laudable aims of Global Health, we argue that fieldworkers’ masking and making up data signal the need for greater attention by those designing its research, to better understand and address why and how these practices unfold.