“…A more recent surge in the reflexive study of numbers has brought a renewed interest in the politics behind numeric governance (Alonso and Starr 1987;Berman and Hirschman 2018;Bruno et al 2016;Camargo and Daniel 2021;Diaz-Bone and Didier 2016;Espeland and Stevens 2008;Mennicken and Espeland 2019;Mennicken and Salais 2021). Yet politics can take on quite distinct meanings in a field 'still very far from having general claims or a common theoretical language' (Berman and Hirschman 2018: 258).…”
Section: Bringing Numbers Back In: Quantification In Actionmentioning
For decades now, scholars of quantification have been exposing the rationalist and modernist operations that lend numbers their political qualities. Yet recent anthropological scholarship has begun to show how data's ontological plasticity and messiness are constitutive of alternative political fields. This introduction brings these two streams of literature into productive conversation to rethink the means and meanings of number politics after datafication. We move beyond extant concerns about the governing and stabilising powers of numbers to highlight the moral and affective and the collective and subjective practices out of which data's political effects emerge. Foregrounding the everyday ethical work animating data worlds gives new insights into how numeric infrastructures thrive and fail within emerging socio-cultural and politico-legal milieus.
“…A more recent surge in the reflexive study of numbers has brought a renewed interest in the politics behind numeric governance (Alonso and Starr 1987;Berman and Hirschman 2018;Bruno et al 2016;Camargo and Daniel 2021;Diaz-Bone and Didier 2016;Espeland and Stevens 2008;Mennicken and Espeland 2019;Mennicken and Salais 2021). Yet politics can take on quite distinct meanings in a field 'still very far from having general claims or a common theoretical language' (Berman and Hirschman 2018: 258).…”
Section: Bringing Numbers Back In: Quantification In Actionmentioning
For decades now, scholars of quantification have been exposing the rationalist and modernist operations that lend numbers their political qualities. Yet recent anthropological scholarship has begun to show how data's ontological plasticity and messiness are constitutive of alternative political fields. This introduction brings these two streams of literature into productive conversation to rethink the means and meanings of number politics after datafication. We move beyond extant concerns about the governing and stabilising powers of numbers to highlight the moral and affective and the collective and subjective practices out of which data's political effects emerge. Foregrounding the everyday ethical work animating data worlds gives new insights into how numeric infrastructures thrive and fail within emerging socio-cultural and politico-legal milieus.
“…Furthermore, quantification is often presented as apolitical and persuasive (Bruno et al, 2016). Supiot (2015) claims that numbers have replaced law as the leading government technology.…”
Section: Understanding the Quantitative Practices Of Policymakingmentioning
Concepts like 'the metric society' and 'the tyranny of metrics' suggest that quantitative information increasingly shapes and steers policy and governance. This paper engages critically with such assumptions by using domestication theory to analyse how Norwegian climate and energy policy actors make sense of, assemble, and employ numeric information. Through analysis of interviews with politicians and public employees working with climate and energy policies in the Norwegian government administration, we identified three main categories of narratives of domesticating quantitative information: (1) Numeric engagements, (2) Uncertainty, and (3) Pragmatic information management. Employees in the administration articulated either of the two first categories, while politicians and political advisors performed the third. All interviewees highlighted the need for more cautious and reflexive approaches to numeric information rather than enthusiastically embracing such information. In their decision-making, the policymakers appeared to be guided by numbers rather than steered by them.
“…While there are also statistics pertaining to the life of the countries and regions that the portals contain data about––sometimes reminiscent of “at a glance” style summaries, dashboards, and country profiles that may be found on web pages of international organizations and the CIA World Fact Book––portal stats focus on the quantification and display of how data is made public. As historical and social studies of quantification explore the making of official numbers (Desrosières, 2002; Espeland and Stevens, 2008; Bruno et al, 2016), portal stats may be understood as the making public or socialization of official numbers, displaying what is entailed in publishing data, indicators of success, traces of the work of cajoling government departments, cleaning and uploading datasets, publicizing portals, engaging with users, making applications, organizing events, and so on. Evident in these displays is the sense in which portal users may be those interested in statistical summaries of the work of opening things up––which may also include government departments, other countries, international organizations, funders, NGOs, civil society groups, and other professional users. Figure 7. Selection of activity stats from national data portals.…”
Section: Studying Data Portals As Online Devicesmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Informed by work on the histories and sociologies of quantification (Desrosières, 2002; Espeland and Stevens, 2008; Bruno et al, 2016) analyzing data about datasets may provide both historical and comparative insights into the politics of public sector datafication: which kinds of topics and concerns appear when, how they are “parameterized” (Gray, 2018b), and which receive attention from data portal makers and users. For example, looking at metadata on topics and organizations on (Figure 12), one can see many datasets related to environment and mapping from a handful of organizations who appear to contribute the greatest numbers of datasets (e.g., United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, Natural England, Environment Agency) ––while also seeing that government spending data has the greatest number and diversity of different organizational contributors by topics, reflecting the liberal-conservative coalition government’s spending transparency commitments (Gray, 2014).…”
Section: Studying Data Portals As Online Devicesmentioning
The past decade has seen the rise of “data portals” as online devices for making data public. They have been accorded a prominent status in political speeches, policy documents, and official communications as sites of innovation, transparency, accountability, and participation. Drawing on research on data portals around the world, data portal software, and associated infrastructures, this paper explores three approaches for studying the social life of data portals as technopolitical devices: (a) interface analysis, (b) software analysis, and (c) metadata analysis. These three approaches contribute to the study of the social lives of data portals as dynamic, heterogeneous, and contested sites of public sector datafication. They are intended to contribute to critically assessing how participation around public sector datafication is invited and organized with portals, as well as to rethinking and recomposing them.
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