The New Politics of Numbers : Utopia, Evidence and Democracy.

Intro -- 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'�etre? -- 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 donn�ee n'est pas un donn�e": 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.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2023. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.