MAKING THINGS QUANTITATIVE

Quantification is not merely a strategy for describing the social and natural worlds, but a means of reconfiguring them. It entails the impo sition of new meanings and the disappearance of old ones. Often it is allied to systems of experimental or administrative control, and in fa ct considerable feats of human organization are generally required eve n to create stable, reasonably standardized measures. This essay urges that the uses of quantification in science, social science, and burea ucratic social and economic policy are analogous in important ways to accountancy.