This paper follows a quantification device – French higher education performance indicators – from its birth through its construction to its uses. It differentiates three levels of analysis. First, the bedrock level: a ...
In a world that is said to be more and more filled with quantities, this paper focuses on the practices and reasons of people refusing quantities; people who want to purify their world from numbers. It uses the history of ...
Around the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese intellectuals and political leaders dreamed of a modern nation inhabited by politically aware citizens. For them, this involved the production and circulation of social ...
This paper uses the case of prison privatization in England and Wales to scrutinize what it means to “economize the social” through numbers. It argues that we ought to be careful not to equate quantification with economization. ...