A Sociology of Quantification

Abstract

One of the most notable political developments of the last thirty years has been increasing public and governmental demand for the quantification of social phenomena, yet sociologists generally have paid little attention to the spread of quantification or the significance of new regimes of measurement. Our article addresses this oversight by analyzing quantification – the production and communication of numbers – as a general sociological phenomenon. Drawing on scholarship across the social sciences in Europe and North America as well as humanistic inquiry, we articulate five sociological dimensions of quantification and call for an ethics of numbers.

Mastering the jazz standard: Sayings and doings of artistic valuation

“…For a historical analysis on the emergence of pseudoquantities in contemporary capitalist economies that contrast quantity and quality, see Liedman (2013). On the emergence of "sociology of quantification", see Espeland and Stevens (2008). Another influential account, trying to embrace the continuum between judgment and calculation (qualqulation), is outlined by Callon and Muniesa (2005). ordering of the performances to a fixed scoring matrix, the gatekeepers comment that the latter is sometimes a tricky task.…”

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“…Such work can be understood as an extension of the analysis of the production of numbers and mathematical representations in the history of science (Hacking, 1990) and laboratory studies (Latour and Woolgar, 1986). The sociological analysis of quantifi cation has focused on numbers' practical uses and the ways in which these are related to wider networks of practices (Desrosières, 1998;Espeland and Stevens, 2009;Fourcade, 2011).…”

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