Sociology of quantification

Last updated

The sociologyof quantification is the investigation of quantification as a sociological phenomenon in its own right. [1]

Contents

Content

According to a review published in 2018 [2] sociology of quantification is an expanding field which includes the literature on the quantified self, on algorithms, [3] and on various forms of metrics and indicators. [4] [5] Older works which can be classified under the same heading are Theodore Porter’s Trust in Numbers, [6] the works of French sociologists Pierre Bourdieu [7] [8] and Alain Desrosières, [9] and the classic works on probability by Ian Hacking [10] and Lorraine Daston. [11] The discipline gained traction due to the increasing importance and scope of quantification, [2] its relation to the economics of conventions, [12] and by the perception of its dangers as a weapon of oppression, [3] [5] or as means to undesirable ends. [5] [13]

For Sally Engle Merry quantification is a technology of control, but whether it is reformist or authoritarian depends on who harnessed it and for what purpose. [14] The ‘governance by numbers’ is seen by jurist Alain Supiot as repudiating the goal of governing by just laws, advocating in its stead the attainment of measurable objectives. For Supiot the normative use of economic quantification leaves no option for countries and economic actors than to ride roughshod over social legislation, and pledge allegiance to stronger powers. [15]

The French movement of ‘statactivisme’ suggests fighting numbers with numbers under the slogan “a new number is possible". [7] On the other extreme, algorithmic automation is seen as an instrument of liberation by Aaron Bastani, [16] spurring a debate on digital socialism. [17] [18] According to Espeland and Stevens [1] an ethics of quantification would naturally descend from a sociology of quantification, especially at an age where democracy, merit, participation, accountability and even "fairness" are assumed to be best discovered and appreciated via numbers. Andrea Mennicken and Wendy Espeland provide a review (2019) of the main concerns about the "increasing expansion of quantification into all realms, including into people’s personal lives". [19] These authors discuss the new patterns of visibility and obscurity created by quantitative technologies, how these influence relations of power, and how neoliberal regimes of quantification favour 'economization', where "individuals, activities, and organizations are constituted or framed as economic actors and entities." Mennicken and Robert Salais have curated in 2022 a multi-author volume titled The New Politics of Numbers: Utopia, Evidence and Democracy, [20] with contributions encompassing Foucauldian studies of governmentality, which first flourished in the English-speaking world, and studies of state statistics known as ‘economics of convention’, developed mostly at INSEE in France. A theme treated by several authors is the relationship between quantification and democracy, with regimes of algorithmic governmentality [21] and artificial intelligence posing a threat to democracy and to democratic agency. [22] [23]

Mathematical modelling is a field of interest for sociology of quantification, [24] and the intensified use of mathematical models in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a debate on how society uses models. Rhodes and Lancaster speak of 'model as public troubles' [25] and starting from models as boundary objects call for a better relation between models and society. Other authors propose five principles for making models serve society, on the premise that modelling is a social activity. [26] Models as mediators between 'theories' and 'the world' are discussed in a multi-author book edited by Mary S. Morgan and Margaret Morrison [27] that offer several examples from physics and economics. An earlier work by Morgan offers elements of history and sociology of modelling in economics and econometrics. [28]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pierre Bourdieu</span> French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher (1930–2002)

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence in several related academic fields. During his academic career he was primarily associated with the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and the Collège de France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Mannheim</span> Hungarian sociologist (1893–1947)

Karl Mannheim was an influential Hungarian sociologist during the first half of the 20th century. He is a key figure in classical sociology, as well as one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge. Mannheim is best known for his book Ideology and Utopia (1929/1936), in which he distinguishes between partial and total ideologies, the latter representing comprehensive worldviews distinctive to particular social groups, and also between ideologies that provide support for existing social arrangements, and utopias, which look to the future and propose a transformation of society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences</span> French higher education institution

The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences is a graduate grande école and grand établissement in Paris focused on academic research in the social sciences. It is regarded as one of the most prestigious institutions of graduate education in France. The school awards Master and PhD degrees alone and conjointly with the grandes écoles École normale supérieure, École polytechnique, and École pratique des hautes études.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sociology of art</span>

The sociology of art is a subfield of sociology that explores the societal dimensions of art and aesthetics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theodore Porter</span> American historian

Theodore M. Porter is a professor who specializes in the history of science in the Department of History at UCLA. He has authored several books, including The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900; and Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, the latter a vast reference for sociology of quantification. His most recent book, published by Princeton University Press in 2018, is Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity. He graduated from Stanford University with an A.B. in history in 1976 and earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1981. In 2008, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2023, he received the George Sarton Medal for lifetime achievement from the History of Science Society.

Alain Desrosières was a statistician, sociologist and historian of science in France, well known for his work in the history of statistics He is the author of The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning , published in 1993, translated into several languages, including English in 1998, and subsequently reviewed in the LRB in 2000. This described the origins of statistics as technical machinery for administration in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the attempts to measure human and economic development. The text is an account of the statistics and their use in abstracting features of society to better measure and understand them, with particular aims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laurent Thévenot</span>

Laurent Thévenot is a French sociologist Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris).

Alain Supiot FBA is a French legal scholar.

The following events related to sociology occurred in the 1990s.

Beverley Skeggs is a British sociologist, noted as one of the foremost feminist sociologists in the world. Currently, she works as a "Distinguished Professor" in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University, developing a Center for Social Inequalities in the North West of England. She continues to run the "Economics of Care" theme at the International Inequalities centre at the London School of Economics (LSE) and is a visiting professor at Goldsmiths University. She has been the head of two of the UK's leading Sociology Departments, at the University of Manchester and Goldsmiths, as well as co-director of Lancaster's Women's Studies. In addition, she played a part in transforming Britain's oldest sociology journal, The Sociological Review, into an independent foundation devoted to opening up critical social science and supporting social scientists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography of sociology</span>

This bibliography of sociology is a list of works, organized by subdiscipline, on the subject of sociology. Some of the works are selected from general anthologies of sociology, while other works are selected because they are notable enough to be mentioned in a general history of sociology or one of its subdisciplines.

In mathematics and empirical science, quantification is the act of counting and measuring that maps human sense observations and experiences into quantities. Quantification in this sense is fundamental to the scientific method.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen L. Morgan</span> American sociologist (born 1971)

Stephen Lawrence Morgan is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Education at the Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences and Johns Hopkins School of Education. A quantitative methodologist, he is known for his contributions to quantitative methods in sociology as applied to research on schools, particularly in models for educational attainment, improving the study of causal relationships, and his empirical research focusing on social inequality and education in the United States.

Ethics of quantification is the study of the ethical issues associated to different forms of visible or invisible forms of quantification. These could include algorithms, metrics/indicators, statistical and mathematical modelling, as noted in a review of various aspects of sociology of quantification.

The French movement of statactivism advocates for the mobilization of statistics in support to social movements and agendas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Saltelli</span> Italian researcher

Andrea Saltelli is an Italian scholar studying quantification with statistical and sociological tools, extending the theory of sensitivity analysis to sensitivity auditing.

Sociodicy is the explanation and exploration of the fundamental goodness of human society. It seeks to provide an account for humans' general success in living together despite their propensity to selfishness, violence, and evil and despite the variation and difference seen across human populations.

The Politics of Large Numbers is a history book by French statistician, sociologist and historian of science, Alain Desrosières, which was originally published in French in 1993. The English translation, by Camille Naish, was published in 1998 by Harvard University Press.

The New Politics of Numbers: Utopia, evidence and democracy is a multi-author book edited by sociologists Andrea Mennicken and Robert Salais and published in 2022 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Trust in numbers is a book of Theodore Porter published in 1995 by Princeton University Press.

References

  1. 1 2 W. N. Espeland and M. L. Stevens, “A sociology of quantification,” Eur. J. Sociol., vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 401–436, 2008.
  2. 1 2 E. Popp Berman and D. Hirschman, “The Sociology of Quantification: Where Are We Now?,” Contemp. Sociol., vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 257–266, 2018.
  3. 1 2 C. O’Neil, Weapons of math destruction : how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. Random House Publishing Group, 2016.
  4. ↑ W. N. Espeland and M. Sauder, Engines of anxiety : academic rankings, reputation, and accountability. Russell Sage Foundation, 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 J. Z. Muller, The tyranny of metrics. Princeton University Press, 2018.
  6. ↑ Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton University Press, 1996.
  7. 1 2 I. Bruno, E. Didier, and J. Prévieux, Statactivisme. Comment lutter avec des nombres. Paris: Zones, La Découverte, 2014.
  8. ↑ Robson, K., Sanders, C. (Eds.), 2009. Quantifying Theory: Pierre Bourdieu. Springer.
  9. ↑ Desrosières, A., 1998. The Politics of Large Numbers: a history of statistical reasoning . Harvard University Press.
  10. ↑ Hacking, I., 1990. The taming of chance. Cambridge University Press
  11. ↑ Daston, L., 1995. Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. Princeton University Press.
  12. ↑ Robert Salais, 2012. Quantification and the Economics of Convention. Hist. Soc. Res. 37, 55–63.
  13. ↑ Theodore Porter, “Funny Numbers,” Cult. Unbound, vol. 4, pp. 585–598, 2012.
  14. ↑ Sally Engle Merry, 2016, The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking, Chicago University press.
  15. ↑ Alain Supiot, Governance by Numbers: The Making of a Legal Model of Allegiance. Oxford University Press, 2007.
  16. ↑ A. Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism: A Manifesto. New York: Verso, 2019.
  17. ↑ J. Mostafa, “The Revolution Will Not Be Automated,” Sydney Review of Books, Jul-2019.
  18. ↑ E. Morozov, “Digital Socialism? The Calculation Debate in the Age of Big Data,” new left Rev., no. 116/117, pp. 33–68, 2019.
  19. ↑ Mennicken, Andrea, and Wendy Nelson Espeland. 2019. “What’s New with Numbers? Sociological Approaches to the Study of Quantification.” Annual Review of Sociology 45 (1): 223–45. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-073117-041343.
  20. ↑ Mennicken, Andrea, and Robert Salais. 2022. The New Politics of Numbers: Utopia, Evidence and Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan.
  21. ↑ Supiot, Alain. 2015. La Gouvernance par les nombres. Paris: Fayard. https://www.fayard.fr/sciences-humaines/la-gouvernance-par-les-nombres-9782213681092.
  22. ↑ Salais, Robert. 2022. “‘La Donnée n’est Pas Un Donné’: Statistics, Quantification and Democratic Choice.” In The New Politics of Numbers: Utopia, Evidence and Democracy, Andrea Mennicken and Rober Salais, 379–415. : : Utopia, Evidence and Democracy. Palgrave Macmillan.
  23. ↑ McQuillan, Dan. 2022. Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence. Bristol University Press. https://www.amazon.es/Resisting-AI-Anti-fascist-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/1529213495.
  24. ↑ Morgan, Mary S., and Margaret Morrison, eds. 1999. Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
  25. ↑ T. Rhodes and K. Lancaster, “Mathematical models as public troubles in COVID-19 infection control: following the numbers,” Heal. Sociol. Rev., pp. 1–18, May 2020.
  26. ↑ A. Saltelli, G. Bammer, I. Bruno, E. Charters, M. Di Fiore, E. Didier, W. Nelson Espeland, J. Kay, S. Lo Piano, D. Mayo, R.J. Pielke, T. Portaluri, T.M. Porter, A. Puy, I. Rafols, J.R. Ravetz, E. Reinert, D. Sarewitz, P.B. Stark, A. Stirling, P. van der Sluijs, Jeroen P. Vineis, Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto, Nature 582 (2020) 482–484.
  27. ↑ Morgan, M.S., Morrison, M. (Eds.), 1999. Models as Mediators: Perspectives on Natural and Social Science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge ; New York.
  28. ↑ Morgan, Mary S. 2012. The World in the Model: How Economists Work and Think. New edition. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.