Recently, there has been a proliferation of measures responding to demands for accountability and transparency. Using the example of media rankings of law schools, this article argues that the methodological concept of reactivity—the idea that people change their behavior in reaction to being evaluated, observed, or measured—offers a useful lens for disclosing how these measures effect change. A framework is proposed for investigating the consequences, both intended and unintended, of public measures. The article first identifies two mechanisms, self‐fulfilling prophecy and commensuration, that induce reactivity and then distinguishes patterns of effects produced by reactivity. This approach demonstrates how these increasingly fateful public measures change expectations and permeate institutions, suggesting why it is important for scholars to investigate the impact of these measures more systematically.

/pdf/rankings-and-reactivity-how-public-measures-recreate-social-4fbnkl974i.pdf

Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds

One of the most notable political developments of the last thirty years has been increasing public and governmental demand for the quantification of social phenomena, yet sociologists generally have paid little attention to the spread of quantification or the significance of new regimes of measurement. Our article addresses this oversight by analyzing quantification – the production and communication of numbers – as a general sociological phenomenon. Drawing on scholarship across the social sciences in Europe and North America as well as humanistic inquiry, we articulate five sociological dimensions of quantification and call for an ethics of numbers.

/pdf/a-sociology-of-quantification-40pbjp2ial.pdf

A Sociology of Quantification

The goal of the National Council on Education and the Disciplines (NCED) is to advance a vision that will unify and guide efforts to strengthen K–16 education in the United States. In pursuing this aim, NCED especially focuses on the continuity and quality of learning in the later years of high school and the early years of college. From its home at The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, NCED draws on the energy and expertise of scholars and educators in the disciplines to address the school–college continuum. At the heart of its work is a national reexamination of the core literacies—quantitative, scientific, historical, and communicative— that are essential to the coherent, forward-looking education all students deserve. Founded in 1945, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to the encouragement of excellence in education through the identification of critical needs and the development of effective national programs to address them. This combination of analysis and translation into action is the Foundation's unique contribution. Its programs include fellowships for graduate study, professional development for teachers, educational opportunities for women and minorities, relating the academy to society, and national service.

Mathematics and democracy : the case for quantitative literacy

Many champions of environmental accounting suggest that calculating and internalizing ‘externalities’ is the solution to environmental problems. Many critics of neoliberalism counter that the spread of market-like calculations into ‘non-market’ spheres, is, on the contrary, itself at the root of such problems. This article proposes setting aside this debate and instead closely examining the concrete conflicts, contradictions and resistances engendered by environmental accounting techniques and the perpetually incomplete efforts of accountants and their allies to overcome them. In particular, it explores how cost–benefit analysis and the carbon accounting techniques required by the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and other carbon trading mechanisms ‘frame’ new agents, spaces, relations and objects, and what the consequences have been and are likely to be.

Toward a different debate in environmental accounting: The cases of carbon and cost–benefit

Nationalism has long excited debate in political, social and cultural theory and remains a key field of enquiry among historians, anthropologists, sociologists as well as political scientists. It is also one of the critical media issues of our time. There are, however, surprisingly few volumes that bring together the best of this intellectual diversity into one collection.

The SAGE Handbook of Nations and Nationalism

This study undertaken for the National Committee for Research on the 1980 Census is one in a series of volumes concerned with analyses of the results of the 1980 U.S. census. The present volume differs from others in the series in that it focuses not on the data itself but on the governmental system of data collection and analysis. The focus here is on the social and political significance of decisions concerning data collection measurement interpretation and presentation. Part 1 on the politics of economic measurement contains chapters on the different views of economic statistics held by governmental political and academic professionals; the politics of income measurement; and the development of national income accounting. Part 2 is on the politics of population measurement; chapters are included on the 1980 census in historical perspective politics and the measurement of ethnicity and the social and political context of population forecasting. Part 3 focuses on the relationship between the functions of statistics and the characteristics of democratic politics. Part 4 deals with the connections between statistics and various levels of U.S. government. Part 5 contains chapters on technological developments and their consequences and on the rise of the statistical services industry.

The politics of numbers.

The Politics of Numbers.

The Politics of Numbers

Population in an Interacting World.

Numerable Knowledge and its Discontents@@@The Politics of Numbers.@@@A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America.@@@The United States Census and Labor Force Change: A History of Occupation Statistics, 1870-1940.

William Alonso

Papers

The politics of numbers.

The Politics of Numbers.

The Politics of Numbers

Population in an Interacting World.

Numerable Knowledge and its Discontents@@@The Politics of Numbers.@@@A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America.@@@The United States Census and Labor Force Change: A History of Occupation Statistics, 1870-1940.