Abstract
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.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 223-245 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | Annual Review of Sociology |
| Volume | 45 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jul 30 2019 |
Funding
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: QUADQuantification, 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 Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, Netherlands). Espeland thanks the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study for their generous intellectual and financial support. Both authors thank the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, especially the quantification group, where the seeds for this article were planted. 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.
Keywords
- Quantification
- commensuration
- economization
- politics of visibility
- quantified self
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science