Calculating the Social: Standards and the Reconfiguration of Governing

Examining the increasingly powerful role of standards in the governing of economic, political and social life, this book draws upon governmentality and actor network theory to explore how standards and standardizing projects are articulated and rendered workable in practice, and the objects, subjects and forms of identity to which this gives rise.

Table of Contents:
Standards and Standardization as a Social Science Problem; V.Higgins  & W.Larner PART I THE GLOBAL AND LOCAL POLITICS OF STANDARDIZING Calculating Hybrids;  P.Miller, L.Kurunmäki  & T.O'Leary Gendering Codes of Conduct: Chiquita Bananas and Nicaraguan Women Workers;  M.Prieto-Carrón  & W.Larner The Practice of Third Party Certification: Enhancing Environmental Sustainability and Social Justice in the Global South?;  C.Bain  & M.Hatanaka PART II TECHNOLOGIES OF GOVERNING AND THE STANDARDIZING OF THE SOCIAL E-government and the Production of Standardized Individuality;  P.Henman  & M.Dean The Standardizing of Nursing Competencies;  A.Dugdale  & L.Grealish Industry Analysts and the Labour of Comparison;  N.Pollock Sticking Plasters and the Standardizations of Everyday Life;  M.Michael PART III THE CONTESTATION AND ADAPTATION OF STANDARDIZING PRACTICES Local Experiments with Global Certificates: How Russian Software Testers are Inventing Themselves as a Profession;  M.Feakins Adapting Standards: The Case of Environmental Management Systems in Australia;  V.Higgins, J.Dibden  & C.Cocklin Standards, Orphan Drugs, and Pharmaceutical Markets; C.Novas PART IV CONCLUSION From Standardization to Standardizing Work;  V.Higgins  & W.Larner

About the Author :
CARMEN BAIN is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Iowa State University, USA CHRIS COCKLIN is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at James Cook University, Queensland, Australia MITCHELL DEAN is Professor of Sociology and formerly Dean of the Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy at Macquarie University, Australia JACQUI DIBDEN is a Senior Research Fellow with the Monash Regional Australia Project, School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Australia ANNI DUGDALE is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Canberra, Australia MELANIE FEAKINS is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley, USA LAURIE GREALISH is Associate Professor in nursing at the University of Canberra, Australia MAKI HATANAKA is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology at Utah State University, USA PAUL HENMAN is a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Queensland, Australia LIISA KURUNMÄKI is a Reader in Accounting, and a Research Associate of the ESRC Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR) at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK MIKE MICHAEL is Professor of Sociology of Science and Technology, and Director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process, at the Sociology Department, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK PETER MILLER is Professor of Management Accounting at the London School ofEconomics and Political Science, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Analysis of Risk and Regulation, UK CARLOS NOVAS is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University, Canada TED O'LEARY is a Professor of Accounting at the University of Manchester, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), USA NEIL POLLOCK is a Reader at the University of Edinburgh where he teaches and researches on the sociology of information technologies, UK MARINA PRIETO-CARRON is Lecturer in Geography at the University of Portsmouth, UK

Review :
'This excellent collection of essays gets beneath the surface of the 'world of standards' which we inhabit. At the point of their enactment and materialization in checklists, registers, accounting statements and questionnaires, standards are necessarily enmeshed in complex local webs of action and reaction. Each contribution shows how standards and the forms of calculation which they engender are always incomplete yet powerful projects of social and economic organization'. - Professor Michael Power, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK