What numbers do? production, uses, and effects of quantification in everyday life

• Autor(a) principal: Maricato, Glaucia
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Richter, Vitor Simonis
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng; por
• Título da fonte: Mediações - Revista de Ciências Sociais
• Texto Completo: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/mediacoes/article/view/44048
• topic: Numbers; Quantification; Technologies of government; Scales; Classifications; Números; Procesos de cuantificación; Tecnologías gubernamentales; Escalas; Clasificación; Números; Processos de quantificação; Tecnologias de governo; Escalas; Classificações

The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak engendered an intense circulation of tables, graphics, statistics and rankings that seek to narrate the infection`s behavior and deaths. Such “data” became the object of disputes and negotiations, highlighting the centrality and political effects of numerical narratives. For a long time, researchers have been approaching processes of measuring populations and social phenomena as instruments of power and, more recently, they have advanced in the discussion on the political effects of reducing complex social processes to numbers. In this introduction, we outline issues that populate contemporary debates on quantification processes in the fields of social sciences and science and technology studies (STS). More specifically, we address the role of numbers in government and State narratives and we introduce debates on the role of classifications, on scalar effects, and on the use of numbers on technologies of government.