Beer Metric Power

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-137-55649-3
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 233 Seiten

Reihe: Social Sciences

This book examines the powerful and intensifying role that metrics play in ordering and shaping our everyday lives. Focusing upon the interconnections between measurement, circulation and possibility, the author explores the interwoven relations between power and metrics. He draws upon a wide-range of interdisciplinary resources to place these metrics within their broader historical, political and social contexts. More specifically, he illuminates the various ways that metrics implicate our lives - from our work, to our consumption and our leisure, through to our bodily routines and the financial and organisational structures that surround us. Unravelling the power dynamics that underpin and reside within the so-called big data revolution, he develops the central concept of Metric Power along with a set of conceptual resources for thinking critically about the powerful role played by metrics in the social world today.

David Beer is Reader in Sociology at the University of York, UK.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Beer, David

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Preface;8
2;Acknowledgements;12
3;Contents;14
4;1: Introducing Metric Power;15
4.1; Contextualising Metric Power;20
4.2; Metrics and Power;25
4.3; Competition and Metrics;31
4.4; The Variegated Mechanisms of Competition;33
4.5; What Should Be Measured and How? Metrics and Judgement;36
4.6; Verifications and Truth-making;40
4.7; The Rest of the Book;44
4.8;References;46
5;2: Measurement;50
5.1; Measurements in Context: Faith, Trust, and Reasoning;53
5.2; The Politics of Number;68
5.3; The Intensification of the Measurement of Life and the Body;73
5.4; Conclusion;82
5.5;References;85
6;3: Circulation;89
6.1; The Social Life of Methods;93
6.2; The ‘Social Life of Data’ and the ‘Politics of Circulation’ Revisited;97
6.3; Metrics and Communicative Capitalism;101
6.4; The Materiality of Circulating Metrics: Where Numbers Get Embodied;111
6.5; Entering the Unknown and Maybe Even the Unknowable;119
6.6; Conclusion;127
6.7;References;131
7;4: Possibility;138
7.1; Possibility and Inequality: What Are the Chances of That?;139
7.2; Value, Worth, and Possibility: What Is Valued? What Is Worthwhile? What, Then, Is Possible?;147
7.3; Possibility and Visibility: What Is Seen and What Is Done;158
7.4; Probability and the Politics of Possibility;168
7.5; Conclusion;173
7.6;References;175
8;5: Conclusion: The Intersections and Imbrications of Metric Power;180
8.1;References;197
9;6: Coda: Metric Power and the Production of Uncertainty (How Does Metric Power Make Us Feel?);200
9.1; Measurement and the Production of Uncertainty;202
9.2; Making Measures Affective;207
9.3; Affective Measures in Action;214
9.4; Some Closing Reflections on Affective Measures;220
9.5;References;223
10;Index;227