Quantification and objectivity: from statistical conventions to social conventions (original) (raw)

The Quantification of Society

This thesis is concerned with the contemporary history of quantitative surveys in Sweden. The core epistemic practice of constructing surveys is examined empirically through a case study of the SOM Institute (Samhälle, Opinion, Medier) at University of Gothenburg. The SOM Institute has performed surveys in Sweden since 1986. However, the methodology of quantitative surveys with representative sampling techniques dates back to the 1940s. A central theme in this theses is to follow how these methods and techniques have been made to work under different historical circumstances.

The Contribution of the Sociology of Quantification to a Discussion of Objectivity in Economics

In this chapter I analyse objectivity in economics from the perspective of the sociology of quantification as the result of 'investments in forms' supporting public action and the public discussion concerning collective ends and means to be pursued. Quantification is guaranteed by 'conventions of quantification' that are the outcome of controversies about the good, or convenient, way to evaluate persons and things, according to desirable social goals aimed at. The current emphasis on quantified objectives to evaluate public action urges social scientists openly to discuss, instead of concealing or denouncing, the agreed upon realism of quantified objects.

The Sociology of statistics - possibilities of a new field of investigation

História, Ciências, Saúde - Manguinhos, 2009

This article presents some possibilities for investigation unveiled by the sociology of statistics. Of particular importance in the area of demand is the power to provide the fundamentals used in government technologies in nation-states (political domain). In terms of the use of statistics, the role in forming the categories of perceptions of reality (cognitive domain) is highlighted. Within the scope of production (institutional domain), it is important to emphasize the organization of the activity into different temporalities. The tensions between the technical/normative advances recommended by scientific associations and the pragmatic requirements of public administration are also examined. This article seeks to provide a brief reflection on the morphology and the scientific culture of statistical institutions.

Cussó, Roser & Piguet, Laure “Statistics and Quantification”

In Badache, Fanny; Kimber, Leah R., and Maertens, Lucile (eds) International Organizations and Research Methods, E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, pp.174-181, 2023

Quantified information is one among the many daily productions of IOs. From trade statistics to unemployment rates, these institutions make available to a “world community of users” data on almost every aspect of the social and physical world. How can a researcher approach these statistics? What are the particularities of studying data produced by IOs as compared to the study of other IO productions, or of national statistics? What does this research tell us about the functioning of IOs and, more broadly, about statistical expertise as an instrument of power and influence? The sociology of quantification offers useful methodological guidelines for the researcher who aims at opening the “black box” of the statistical production of IOs.

Statistics and Quantification

Fanny Badache, Leah R. Kimber, Lucile Martens (ed), International Organizations and Research Methods. An Introduction, 2023

Quantified information is one among the many daily productions of IOs. From trade statistics to unemployment rates, these institutions make avail- able to a “world community of users” data on almost every aspect of the social and physical world. How can a researcher approach these statistics? What are the particularities of studying data produced by IOs as compared to the study of other IO productions, or of national statistics? What does this research tell us about the functioning of IOs and, more broadly, about statistical expertise as an instrument of power and influence? The sociology of quantification offers useful methodological guidelines for the researcher who aims at opening the “black box” of the statistical production of IOs.

Quantification and the economics of convention

Historical Social Research, 2012

»Quantifizierung und die économie des conventions«. Analyzing social processes of quantification has close relationship with the origins, core and potentialities of the economics of convention. Quantification and its social organization and goals are now impacted by the turn toward the market for organizing all human activities. Research should focus on the relationship between generalizing the market, transforming the state and changing the role and status of quantification. Retracing the main outcomes of the seminal works on quantification, this paper highlights the contributions that EC could provide in that field.

The politics of quantification * * I would like to thank Peter Miller for encouraging me to write this essay and offering useful advice on revising it. I would also like to thank Ted Porter for his useful correction of some of my interpretation of the book. Of course, neither is responsible for t...

Accounting Organizations and Society - ACCOUNT ORGAN SOC, 1998

Ted Porter’s Trust in Numbers is an ambitious attempt to show how quantification in the social sciences was a response to problems of trust generated by conflicts between social scientists, politicians, managers, owners, and bureaucrats in the U.S., Britain, and France. Porter’s argument is that quantification is one way to attain trust within a profession or in the political sphere. His case studies show that less organized social scientists were forced by external constituencies to quantify, while more organized groups were able to assert their expertise and use connections to important political and economic elites to resist quantification. While Porter’s book opens new terrain, I propose that one way to reinterpret the book is to have a more explicit view of how the relations between political and economic elites produce different problems of trust and different forms of control.

The concept and commodity of official statistics

Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 2017

New threats and opportunities make it imperative to rethink the foundations of official statistics. This essay examines the industry's freedom of action. It identifies four ways of defining official statistics and considers their impact. It treats official statistics as a commodity, and the prospects of trading the commodity are examined relative to the concepts of public and private goods, merit goods and the common good, goods versus services, search, experience and credence goods, semi-finished and finished products. Product quality is discussed relative to the quality criteria of conformance to specifications and fitness for purposes, and the means to achieve quality are discussed as standardisation and customisation. The means determine the comparability of the statistics, and comparability determines the opportunities for perfect and monopolistic competition. The essay notes that the official statistics industry empowers those who compare, but also that it makes an exception for itself. Finally it is suggested that the biggest threat to the statistical agencies may not be the coming of competition but inability to rejuvenate the product set due to confinement in the state's bureaucracy.

What Numbers Do? Production, Uses, and Effects of Quantification in Everyday Life

Mediações - Revista de Ciências Sociais, 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak engendered an intense circulation of tables, graphics, statistics and rankings that seek to narrate the infection`s behavior and deaths. Such "data" became the object of disputes and negotiations, highlighting the centrality and political effects of numerical narratives. For a long time, researchers have been approaching processes of measuring populations and social phenomena as instruments of power and, more recently, they have advanced in the discussion on the political effects of reducing complex social processes to numbers. In this introduction, we outline issues that populate contemporary debates on quantification processes in the fields of social sciences and science and technology studies (STS). More specifically, we address the role of numbers in government and State narratives and we introduce debates on the role of classifications, on scalar effects, and on the use of numbers on technologies of government.