Call for papers: "The double consciousness of quantification"

The double consciousness of quantification. Ethnographic approaches to world representation with numbers
Guest editors:
Etienne Bourel (anthropologue, post-doctorant, CADS, University of Leiden / IFSRA, Ouagadougou)
Frédéric Le Marcis (anthropologue, PU, Triangle UMR 5206 – ENS de Lyon / TransVIHMI UMI 233 - IRD, INSERM, Université de Montpellier).

How are the numbers that circulate and that we access in the contemporary world produced? How is the work of configuring algorithms needed to process Big Data or Machine Learning carried out (Boullier and El Mhamdi, 2020)? What do we know about the “social life of standards” (Graham et al., 2021) or about ethnic and discrimination statistics (Tin, 2014)? This special issue starts from the idea that practicing an anthropology of quantification and statistical sciences is necessary to enrich the understanding of both epistemological positions and political arguments about the contemporary world. In particular, we look at the “dirty work” (Lhuilier, 2005) of producing numbers and the technical, engineering and scientific practices associated with it and too often overlooked. Doing so, we take up the hypothesis that part of the power of numbers lies in the fact that the “black box” of their production remains closed (Latour 1987).

For example, in Central African forestry activities related to certification, entrepreneurial and development projects, there are constant discrepancies between field practices and the quantitative documents that report on them. In the same region, the carbon offset markets have been set up in recent years. Once again, it has been based on the involvement of stakeholders in speculation about the viability of scenarios backed up by numbers and circulating in bureaucratic circles (Ehrenstein and Muniesa, 2013). How are the measuring and development tools being elaborated and by whom, how do they circulate is a central question of this call for papers (Jerven, 2013).

The manufacturing of numbers may also be discussed in the light of the role now played by the issue of anticipation, particularly in health policies (Lakoff, 2017, Le Marcis, 2023), or by addressing the modelling and multidisciplinary aspects of epidemic management in order to determine whether numbers could be “better” as a result. If data production is central to healthcare system governance, we ask what veils of ignorance these figures cast over the world. In the domain of clinical trials, how do scientists deal with the tensions between real life (life outside the trial) and life as represented within it (Brive et al. 2016)?
For this special issue, we propose to take up a point made by Alain Desrosières (2008) when highlighting the contradictions, in the statistical approach, between a “realist” perspective (serving as a tool of power, government, or criticism) and a “conventionalist” perspective (in which the “setting of variables” is itself caught up in a process of political and historical knowledge production). In his view, this raises a problem of “double consciousness”, as Jeanne Favret-Saada (1977) understood it following the famous Octave Mannoni’s expression “I know but still”, insofar as the actors should, at the same time, “know well” that the statistics are produced by convention “but still” believe in a reality that they are asked to quantify. How is this apparent contradiction experienced, understood, and even resolved by the actors to whom it is presented? What operations does this involve? What kind of compromises emerge? In what spaces do the actors circulate and according to what temporalities? What do they say and what do they keep silent about such processes? What does it say about the power relationships at work in the variety of uses of statistics and quantification operations? Can it be seen as the expression of broader contradictions specific to the capitalist system, as Philippe Pignarre and Isabelle Stengers (2007) suggest?

Since arithmetic has been shown to participate in the shaping of subjects’ cognitive experience (daily and situated) (Lave, 1988), how can we think of the increase (regularly envisaged as frenetic) of quantification and ciphering in present experiences of the world and in particular for those who produce numbers? What are the power issues at work in these practices through their appreciation of spatialities and temporalities? Betwixt and between different ways of being in the world and seeing it, how do actors deal with this discomfort (Chateauraynaud, 2014, Gaulejac and Vandewattyne, 2020), or “cognitive dissonance”? Do we validate the perspective of a magical character of capitalism (Moeran and de Waal Malefyt, 2018) about how it makes the world perceived through numbering, leading to the revisiting of ”modern“ conceptions of reality and the person (Boddy, 1994)?

Three major lines of inquiry emerge from this set of questions:
i) The dirty work and black box of producing numbers / quantification;
ii) The contradiction between reality of numbers and ignorance / belief in quantification practices;
iii) The power dynamics and experience of producing numbers / statistics / quantification.

This special issue calls for further examination of these various approaches, in tandem or autonomously, alongside the problem of double consciousness of quantification.
We aim to address the tensions, interpretative possibilities, and compromises that these contexts generate. We seek contributions that examine whom, where and how activities of quantification or “putting the real into variables” (Drouet, 2018) are carried out; the material and organizational devices deployed by these actors; the relationships between numbers, thought and action; the moral qualities attributed to numbers and the reflexive practices they invoke; and how ethnography can shed light on the practical, cognitive and heuristic, ethical and political processes associated with quantification.

We welcome contributions based on extensive fieldwork and related to but not limited to the following main topics (insofar as they approach them from a quantification perspective): evaluation of literacy campaigns, assessment of the extent of sexual violence, sustainable development, climate change, health policies and clinical science. This call is not restricted to any specific geographical area. Proposals that put into perspective or converge French, German and English-speaking interpretative traditions on these issues are particularly encouraged.

Proposals for articles (approx. 3000 characters) are due by 15 September 2024 and should be sent to e_bourel@yahoo.com and frederic.lemarcis@ens-lyon.fr. Full papers are due by March 2025.
The issue is scheduled for publication in Spring 2026.