In this article, I describe my ongoing bioethnographic collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of exposure scientists in environmental engineering and health. First, I explain how and why integrating ethnography and number-based disciplines is such a complex, time-consuming, and worthwhile process, when ethnography produces a kind of excessive “big data” that is not easily enumerated. Then I describe three of our current bioethnographic projects that seek to make better numbers about how (1) neighborhoods, (2) water distribution, and (3) employment and chemical exposures shape bodily processes in a highly unequal world. To conclude, I reflect on how we might harness ethnographic excess for making better numbers and thus better knowledge, and also how bioethnographic collaboration inevitably transforms ethnography even as we insist on its excess. [collaboration, methodology, ethnography, big data, biomedical science]

中文翻译：

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通过生物人种学合作创造更好的数字

在这篇文章中，我描述了我与环境工程和健康领域的多学科暴露科学家团队正在进行的生物人种学合作。首先，我解释了如何以及为什么整合民族志和基于数字的学科是一个如此复杂、耗时且值得的过程，当民族志产生一种难以列举的过多“大数据”时。然后我描述了我们当前的三个生物民族志项目，这些项目旨在就 (1) 社区、(2) 水分配和 (3) 就业和化学品暴露如何在高度不平等的世界中塑造身体过程做出更好的数字。总而言之，我反思了我们如何利用人种学的过剩来获得更好的数字，从而获得更好的知识，以及生物民族志合作如何不可避免地改变民族志，即使我们坚持其过度。[合作、方法论、民族志、大数据、生物医学]