The World of Indicators: The Making of Governmental Knowledge through Quantification

The twenty-first century has seen a further dramatic increase in the use of quantitative knowledge for governing social life after its explosion in the 1980s. Indicators and rankings play an increasing role in the way governmental and non-governmental organizations distribute attention, make decisions, and allocate scarce resources. Quantitative knowledge promises to be more objective and straightforward as well as more transparent and open for public debate than qualitative knowledge, thus producing more democratic decision-making. However, we know little about the social processes through which this knowledge is constituted nor its effects. Understanding how such numeric knowledge is produced and used is increasingly important as proliferating technologies of quantification alter modes of knowing in subtle and often unrecognized ways. This book explores the implications of the global multiplication of indicators as a specific technology of numeric knowledge production used in governance.

Richard Rottenburg holds a Chair in Anthropology at Martin Luther University of Halle, Wittenberg, Germany. His research focuses on the anthropology of law, organization, science and technology (LOST).

Sally Engle Merry is Silver Professor of Anthropology at New York University and a faculty director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Sung-Joon Park is a lecturer at the Institute for Anthropology of the University of Leipzig.

Johanna Mugler is a lecturer at the Institute for Social Anthropology at the University of Bern.