A collaborative research project of the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), Child Health & Development Center of the Makerere University (Uganda), and the Pole Institute (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
This research blog is part of our comparative study of diagnostic testing in the COVID-19 response in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) funded by the German Research Foundation. The project will employ a grounded theory approach to study testing as a technology of knowing. Following this approach, we maintain that studying what people know cannot be separated from a consideration of how they know. Based on this approach, we will examine how COVID-19 testing in the two countries makes both knowing and unknowing—the latter comprising strategic ignorance, public secrets, speculation, and silent knowing—possible. This focus on knowing and unknowing offers an important analytical frame to study people’s assessment of the severity of the pandemic in the two countries and the consequences of knowing and unknowing for people’s health-seeking practices in the context of the pandemic.