Violent Estimations: Humanitarian Data Collection and the Politics of Number

S. E. Freeman • University of California, Berkeley

November 11th @ 6pm • Daniel Family Commons

In the face of ongoing violence and planetary degradation, mass displacement continues to be a defining feature of our present. Yet who counts as ‘displaced’ within a world in motion? For humanitarian actors, that question is answered through data, collected and circulated on a massive scale to reflect the needs of those forced to move. However, while this process might appear seamless, quantifying mobility is contested terrain, displacement and population statistics sites of frequent debate. Drawing on twelve months of empirical research in South Sudan, this talk traces how displaced bodies are recognized, counted, and turned into ‘target populations’ for humanitarian intervention. Approaching quantification as both a relational and spatializing practice, it shows how calculative practices like population estimates and biometric registration come to assign differential value to aggregate life in bounded spatial terms, terms of evaluation that reveal how, where, and whose lives are made to matter in the process of aggregation.

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