TY - JOUR
T1 - What's New with Numbers? Sociological Approaches to the Study of Quantification
AU - Mennicken, Andrea
AU - Espeland, Wendy Nelson
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Bruce Carruthers, Rita Samiolo, Liisa Kurunmäki, Peter Miller, Mike Power, and Doug Massey for their helpful comments and discussions. Mennicken gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant Ref: ES/N018869/1) under the Open Research Area Scheme (Project Title: QUAD—Quantification, Administrative Capacity and Democracy), cofunded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, France), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, Germany), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, United Kingdom), and the Nederlands Organisatie voor Wetenschap-pelijk Onderzoek (NWO, Netherlands). Espeland thanks the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study for their generous intellectual and financial support. Both authors thank the Wissenschaft-skolleg zu Berlin, especially the quantification group, where the seeds for this article were planted.
PY - 2019/7/30
Y1 - 2019/7/30
N2 - Calculation and quantification have been critical features of modern societies, closely linked to science, markets, and administration. In the past thirty years, the pace, purpose, and scope of quantification have greatly expanded, and there has been a corresponding increase in scholarship on quantification. We offer an assessment of the widely dispersed literature on quantification across four domains where quantification and quantification scholarship have particularly flourished: administration, democratic rule, economics, and personal life. In doing so, we seek to stimulate more cross-disciplinary debate and exchange. We caution against unifying accounts of quantification and highlight the importance of tracking quantification across different sites in order to appreciate its essential ambiguity and conduct more systematic investigations of interactions between different quantification regimes.
AB - Calculation and quantification have been critical features of modern societies, closely linked to science, markets, and administration. In the past thirty years, the pace, purpose, and scope of quantification have greatly expanded, and there has been a corresponding increase in scholarship on quantification. We offer an assessment of the widely dispersed literature on quantification across four domains where quantification and quantification scholarship have particularly flourished: administration, democratic rule, economics, and personal life. In doing so, we seek to stimulate more cross-disciplinary debate and exchange. We caution against unifying accounts of quantification and highlight the importance of tracking quantification across different sites in order to appreciate its essential ambiguity and conduct more systematic investigations of interactions between different quantification regimes.
KW - Quantification
KW - commensuration
KW - economization
KW - politics of visibility
KW - quantified self
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U2 - 10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041343
DO - 10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041343
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85069760257
VL - 45
SP - 223
EP - 245
JO - Annual Review of Sociology
JF - Annual Review of Sociology
SN - 0360-0572
ER -