This book offers unique insight into how and where ideas and instruments of quantification have been adopted, and how they have come to matter. Rather than asking what quantification is, New Politics of Numbers explores what quantification does, its manifold consequences in multiple domains. It scrutinizes the power of numbers in terms of the changing relations between numbers and democracy, the politics of evidence, and dreams and schemes of bettering society. The book engages Foucault inspired studies of quantification and the economics of convention in a critical dialogue. In so doing, it provides a rich account of the plurality of possible ways in which numbers have come to govern, highlighting not only their disciplinary effects, but also the collective mobilization capacities quantification can offer. This book will be invaluable reading for academics and graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines, as well as policymakers interested in the opportunities and pitfalls of governance by numbers.
Author(s): Andrea Mennicken, Robert Salais
Series: Executive Politics And Governance
Edition: 1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 514
Tags: Legislative And Executive Politics
Foreword: What Numbers Do
Acknowledgments
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 The New Politics of Numbers: An Introduction
Quantification as Utopia
The Politics of Evidence
Voicing for Democracy
Quantification: Where the Economics of Convention Approach Meets Foucault
References
Part I Quantification as Utopia
2 Creating a Socialist Society and Quantification in the USSR
Inventing a New Form of Statistics for a New Model of Society
A New State Statistics Administration
A Complicated Demarcation Between Accounting and Statistics
A Task of Theoretical Deconstruction
Debates and Tensions Surrounding Statistical Theory
Tension Surrounding the Mean and the Law of Large Numbers
Tensions Around the Shift to the Random Model
What Form of Statistics for Constructing a New Order?
The Relationship Between Statistics and Accounting
Categorization of the Population and Censuses
Confidence in the Data and the Status of the Statistician
What Statistical Tools for a New Order?
Conclusion
References
3 The People’s Algorithms: Social Credits and the Rise of China’s Big (Br)other
The Earlier Chinese Dream
Personal Dossiers
Social Credit
The Total Information System
The Future Now
Bigger Than Big Other
References
4 Accounting for Who We Are and Could Be: Inventing Taxonomies of the Self in an Age of Uncertainty
Corporeal Accounting Within Immaterial Capitalism
Calculation and the Living Body
The Quantified Self
Well-Being, Performance and Emotions as Core Issues of Leibschreiben (Writing the Body)
The Emerging Taxonomies of the Self
Inventing Representational Forms
Moral Conflicts in Quantifying the Self
Quantifying Performance: Alternative Measures, Rational Planning and the Deficiency of Corporeal Sensations
Conclusions
References
5 Quantifying Inequality: From Contentious Politics to the Dream of an Indifferent Power
Words: The Semantics of Poverty and the Syntax of the Threshold
Shifting Words
Moralization
The Threshold
Visibility and Obfuscation
Spatial Choreographies: From Inequality to Distance
Numbers: Measuring Inequality
Conclusions: The Dream of an Indifferent Power
References
Part II The Politics of Evidence
6 Homo Statisticus: A History of France’s General Public Statistical Infrastructure on Population Since 1950
The Representative Household Survey
The Biographical Investigation
The Matched Panels
Homo Statisticus: Three Types of Being Constructed by the Statistical Infrastructure
Conclusion
References
7 A New Calculable Global World in the Making: Governing Through Transnational Certification Standards
Introduction: The Evolving Politics of Calculable Worlds
From State Statistics to Government Through Standards: A Research Programme on the Politics of Conventional Forms and Engagements
Social Coding and Investments in Conventional Forms: The Prerequisites for the Politics of Quantification
Placing Value on Invested Forms: The Plurality of Orders of Worth Involved in Justifications and Criticisms Referring to the Common Good
The Worth of Standards
Standard-Setting in Search of Legitimacy: The Grammars of Commonality in the Plural
Committed to Objects: Valuable Regimes of Engagements with the World Affected by Standardization
Distinctive Features of a New Calculable World Governed by Certification Standards: Which Substitute for the Rule of Law in the Production of Regulations?
Made in Standard: All the Good that Money Can Buy
Multi-Stakeholder Certification: A Liberal Public in Which Opting Individuals Are Formatted as Stakeholders and Options as Measurable Objectives
Participative Technologies and Procedures to Deliberate Over Regulations
A-liberal Conceptions of Communication and Their Managerial Reductions
Experiencing Participative Technologies in Practice: “Open Space” and Dialogue Dispositions Put to the Test of “Smallholders” Engaging in Them
Some Lessons Learnt on the “Participative” and “Legislative” Legitimacy of Governing by Certification Standard
A-testing, Pro-testing and Con-testing: Substitutes for the Judicial System in Putting the Standard Enforcement to a Critical Test
Audit Procedures
RSPO “Dispute Settlement Facility”
Contest: Formatting the Complaint in the Right Form for the Public
Attest: Land Appropriation and Appropriate Evidence
Protest: Direct “Private” Interaction
Some Lessons Learnt on the “Judicial” Legitimacy of Governing by Certification Standards
Discussion of the Certified Objectivity Sought by a “Standardizing Liberalism”: Power-Knowledge and the Enlarged Analysis of Oppression and Criticism
References
8 Do Performance Indicators Improve the Effectiveness of Development Aid?
The Harmful Effects of Performance Indicators
Querying Performance-Based Management in Third World Countries
Giving Aid Recipient Countries Greater Autonomy to Conduct Their Public Policy
Conclusion
References
9 Archaeology of a Quantification Device: Quantification, Policies and Politics in French Higher Education
The Bedrock: NPM, LOLF
Performance Indicators for French Universities: What Are Their Raisons D’être?
The Upper Stratum: The Micro-Conventions of Calculation
The Life of the Device: Context, Uses and Developments
2006–2012
Since 2012
Conclusion
References
Part III Voicing for Democracy
10 Quantification = Economization? Numbers, Ratings and Rankings in the Prison Service of England and Wales
Quantifying and Marketizing: Prison Privatization, Quantification and the Ethos of Contestability
Limits of Marketizing Quantification
Moralizing Versus Economizing Numbers
Quantifying and Financializing: Accrual Accounting and Social Impact Bonds
Private Sector Accrual Accounting
Social Impact Bonds
Conclusion
References
11 The Shifting Legitimacies of Price Measurements: Official Statistics and the Quantification of Pwofitasyon in the 2009 Social Struggle in Guadeloupe
The Quantification of Pwofitasyon in the 2009 Battles for Power
Quantification as a Mode of Action for a Variety of Players
The Role of Technicity and Expertise in the Negotiations
The Legitimacy of Price and Margin Measurements
The Absence of Prices and Margin Measurements Before 2009
The Quantification of Pwofitasyon: Innovation and Tests of Reality
An Expected but Socially and Politically Unacceptable Intervention by Public Statistics
Towards a New Articulation of Prices and Margins
Conclusion
References
12 “La donnée n’est pas un donné”: Statistics, Quantification and Democratic Choice
Introduction: Towards Governance-Driven Quantification
Producing and Interpreting Data is a Collective Undertaking
Inventing and Deconstructing Unemployment as a Category: The Role of Quantification
The Invention of Unemployment: Comparing France, Germany and the UK
Governance-Driven Quantification as Inverted Statistics: Europe and the Reversal of the Pyramid
The Reversal of the Statistical Pyramid
A New Target for Employment Policies
Statistical Tables as Driving Forces
The Set of Indicators as Embedded Norms—Guidelines as Justificatory Covers
A Cooperative Game Between Rational Actors (the Member States and the Commission)
Quantification: Contrasting Rational Governance with Democratic Choice
Democracy and the Emergence of the Category “Unemployment”
Governance-Driven Quantification and “A-Democracy”
Creating Cognitive Ambiguity
Fabricating Proofs of Effectiveness and Efficiency
Generating Difficulties to Articulate Alternative Legitimate Claims
Social Criticism, Justice and Plurality of Quantification Regimes
Introducing Justice and Democracy
The “Informational Basis of Judgment in Justice” (IBJJ)
Deliberative Inquiry as Data Processing
Claiming for Another State
Conclusion: Implications for Research on Quantification Processes
References
13 Free from Numbers? The Politics of Qualitative Sociology in the U.S. Since 1945
Excluding Quantities?
Interpretation and Determinism
The American Soldier
The Qualitative as Propaedeutic
Interpretation Cannot Be Overlooked
The Quantifier Blumer
Ethnomethodology Between Accounts and Official Power
Statistical Accounts
Measurement by Fiat
The Quantitativist Cicourel
Radical Sociology, Quantification and the Welfare State
Are Quantities Fascist?
Light Travelling: Numbers as Gleanings
Institutionalization of a “Qualitative Sociology”
Common Ground
A Bipolar Category
Conclusion
References
14 Afterword: Quantifying, Mediating and Intervening: The R Number and the Politics of Health in the Twenty-First Century
Conclusions
References
Index
