Ethical dimensions of quantification

Espeland, Wendy Nelson; Yung, Vincent

doi:10.1177/0539018419851045

Cited by 26 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 103 publications

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“…As Espeland and Stevens (1998) contend, commensuration provides ‘a way to reduce and simplify disparate information into numbers that can easily be compared’ (p. 316). This type of quantified information is often considered more objective and rational than the qualitative descriptions of particular phenomena (see Daston, 1992; Espeland, 2002; Espeland and Yung, 2019; Porter, 1995).…”

Section: Conceptual Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I will develop this framework by critically synthesizing earlier theoretical and empirical research on university rankings – especially Wendy Espeland and her collaborators’ ideas about commensuration and reactivity (e.g. Espeland and Sauder, 2007, 2009, 2016; Espeland and Stevens, 1998; Espeland and Yung, 2009, 2019; Sauder and Espeland, 2009) – and by complementing it with cognitive perspectives on university rankings that draw on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s (1999, 2003) conceptual theory of metaphor, and the concepts of cognitive artifact (e.g. Norman, 1991) and affordance (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A theoretical framework for explaining the paradox of university rankings

Kaidesoja

2022

Social Science Information

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University rankings have led to the following paradox. On one hand, global and national university rankings have an increasing impact on scientific research and higher education. On the other hand, a growing number of researchers have argued that university rankings are biased and methodologically flawed as well as documented their unintended consequences that are counterproductive to education and research activities in universities. In this article, I combine sociological and cognitive perspectives to develop a theoretical framework for explaining this paradox. The theoretical framework has four interrelated parts. The first is a distinction between three temporal stages through which university rankings commensurate universities. The second consists of an account of the social mechanisms through which university rankings generate reactive outcomes that tend to transform universities instead of just measuring their quality. The third is a league table metaphor that links the conceptual domain of team sports and the conceptual domain of universities and, I argue, provides a cognitive mechanism that shapes how many extra-academic actors, such as prospective students and policymakers, understand the results of university rankings. The fourth focuses on the affordances of the published league tables of university rankings that many extra-academic actors use for outsourcing part of their decision-making to the league tables. As a whole, this framework allows us to understand how the interrelated and materially mediated actions of different groups of actors give rise to and sustain the paradox of university rankings.

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Section: Conceptual Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A theoretical framework for explaining the paradox of university rankings

Kaidesoja

2022

Social Science Information

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“…Glasman's work on minimal versions of humanity and the wider literature on proximity and distance emphasises the need for the 'ethics of quantification' to be taken seriously (Espeland and Yung, 2019). To do so, we can turn to the literature on mediated suffering to further explore this relationship between philosophy and the quantitative (Arendt, 1990;Boltanski, 1999;Chouliaraki, 2006).…”

Section: Strand 3: Effects On Humanitarian Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantification and Humanitarianism

Lawson

2021

Journal of Humanitarian Affairs

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Over the past 25 years, the humanitarian sector has become increasingly dominated by numbers. This has been reflected in the growth of academic work that explores this relationship between humanitarianism and quantification. The most recent contribution to this literature is Joël Glasman’s Humanitarianism and the Quantification of Humanitarian Needs. Through his empirical and theoretical contributions, Glasman draws our attention to the different ways that academics approach this topic. These four strands structure the literature review: knowledge – the technical difficulties in quantifying phenomena; governance – how numbers help humanitarian organisations manage the sector; effects – the impact that quantification has had on the sector as a whole; meaning – the importance of rhetoric, discourse, representation and communication when it comes to understanding the quantitative. As part of the review, the essay also identifies how academics can better engage with each of the four strands.

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“…Contra analysis of the taxpayer as a legal or bureaucratic subject (Walsh, 2018;Björklund Larsen, 2017), the theorization offered here positions the taxpayer as an informal political subjectivity equipped with a vernacular of liberal market thrift (Foucault, 2008) that trades in ideas about the objectivity of numbers and quantification (Espeland & Yung, 2019;Porter, 1996;Rose, 1993), and the technical morality attached to budgeting (Haiven, 2017;Philipps, 1996;Quinn, 2017) and tax (Martin et al, 2009). In settler colonial contexts, taxpayer subjects are constructed through possessiveness (Moreton-Robinson, 2009, property and ownership (Pasternak, 2016;Reardon & TallBear, 2012), and whiteness (Harris, 1993;Walsh, 2018;Baldwin Clark, 2019;Walker, 2020) in opposition to Indigenous self-determination.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taxes, taxpayers, and settler colonialism: Toward a critical fiscal sociology of tax as white property

Willmott

2022

Law Soc Rev

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In settler colonial states such as Canada, tax is central to political ideas that circulate about Indigenous nations and people. The stories that are told about Indigenous peoples by ‘taxpayers’ often involve complaints about budgets, welfare, and ‘unfair’ tax arrangements. The paper theorizes how informal ‘tax imaginaries’ and ‘taxpayer’ subjectivities are forged through state policy and how ostensibly fiscal concerns are imbricated with white political entitlement that erodes Indigenous legal and political sovereignty. By tracing the construction of taxpayer concerns and tax myths as forms of fiscalized racism, the paper demonstrates the importance of tax to settler colonialism and the shape of Indigenous‐settler relations. Taxpayer subjects are not just legal or material positionings in relation to tax and the state, but powerful subjects that refigure political problems as ‘fiscal’ and construct Indigenous people and nations through racialized repertoires of property and possession.

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Ethical dimensions of quantification

Cited by 26 publications

References 103 publications

A theoretical framework for explaining the paradox of university rankings

A theoretical framework for explaining the paradox of university rankings

Quantification and Humanitarianism

Taxes, taxpayers, and settler colonialism: Toward a critical fiscal sociology of tax as white property

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