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Alain Desrosières understood statistics as simultaneous representations of the world and interventions in it. This article examines two mechanisms that mediate how numbers do both. The first, reverse engineering, describes how working backwards from a desired number shapes organizational routines. The second, emotional attachment, describes the processes by which numbers generate a variety of emotions that sometimes stimulate collective identities. Focusing on educational rankings but including examples of other types of numbers, it argues for the importance of disclosing the effects of specific causal mechanisms in the analysis of particular performance measures.

AbstractThe decision not to build Orme Dam was a great political victory for residents of the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation in central Arizona. This article examines the conditions that gave rise to what most considered an unlikely outcome, and the lessons it suggests for understanding the politics of large water projects. These lessons include the importance of understanding that rationality takes multiple forms; that how value is expressed can be as significant as what, and how much, something is valued; that identity politics which elaborates and celebrates cultural differences can be an effective means for challenging even powerful bureaucracies; and that law can be an important mediating structure in the politics of bureaucratic decision‐making. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In August it's the colleges, in April the graduate schools. The annual rankings of universities and their programs result in copies of U.S. News & World Report flying off the shelves, and great fanfare follows. Local news outlets report the lists and the Internet goes all abuzz with discussions about the year's gains and losses in standing. Reactions within schools are also significant, ranging from champagne and bonuses to emergency meetings and fears of pink slips

The transparency of transparency measures -- Accountability by the numbers -- 0L : how prospective law students use rankings -- Rankings and admissions -- Rankings at the top : inside the dean's office -- Career services and employment -- Rankings everywhere

Calculation and quantification have been critical features of modern societies, closely linked to science, markets, and administration. In the past thirty years, the pace, purpose, and scope of quantification have greatly expanded, and there has been a corresponding increase in scholarship on quantification. We offer an assessment of the widely dispersed literature on quantification across four domains where quantification and quantification scholarship have particularly flourished: administration, democratic rule, economics, and personal life. In doing so, we seek to stimulate more cross-disciplinary debate and exchange. We caution against unifying accounts of quantification and highlight the importance of tracking quantification across different sites in order to appreciate its essential ambiguity and conduct more systematic investigations of interactions between different quantification regimes.

Calculation and quantification have been critical features of modern societies, closely linked to science, markets, and administration. In the past thirty years, the pace, purpose, and scope of quantification have greatly expanded, and there has been a corresponding increase in scholarship on quantification. We offer an assessment of the widely dispersed literature on quantification across four domains where quantification and quantification scholarship have particularly flourished: administration, democratic rule, economics, and personal life. In doing so, we seek to stimulate more cross-disciplinary debate and exchange. We caution against unifying accounts of quantification and highlight the importance of tracking quantification across different sites in order to appreciate its essential ambiguity and conduct more systematic investigations of interactions between different quantification regimes.

In this interview, Wendy Espeland and Michael Sauder both reflect on their work on rankings, reactivity and commensuration, and think about the implication their sociological work could have on the practices of those dealing with rankings and their reactive effects.

Modern money creates, transforms, transports, and possesses meaning by virtue of how it is used. This article devises a framework for the systematic study of monetary meaning. In particular, monetary meanings depend on the flow of money (both its proximate source and future direction) and on who promulgates or issues it. Meanings also derive from how money's use and flow are restricted and on monetary media. Monetarization quantifies social activities and introduces new equivalences and comparisons. The factors shaping meaning also underpin important types of monetary variation (homogeneous vs. differentiated money; anonymous vs. personal; material vs. immaterial).