Standards and Their Stories: How Quantifying, Classifying, and Formalizing Practices Shape Everyday Life

by Martha Lampland (Editor), Susan Leigh Star (Editor)

Standardization is one of the defining aspects of modern life, its presence so pervasive that it is usually taken for granted. However cumbersome, onerous, or simply puzzling certain standards may be, their fundamental purpose in streamlining procedures, regulating behaviors, and predicting results is rarely questioned. Indeed, the invisibility of infrastructure and the imperative of standardizing processes signify their absolute necessity. Increasingly, however, social scientists are beginning to examine the origins and effects of the standards that underpin the technology and practices of everyday life. Standards and Their Stories explores how we interact with the network of standards that shape our lives in ways both obvious and invisible. The main chapters analyze standardization in biomedical research, government bureaucracies, the insurance industry, labor markets, and computer technology, providing detailed accounts of the invention of "standard humans" for medical testing and life insurance actuarial tables, the imposition of chronological age as a biographical determinant, the accepted means of determining labor productivity, the creation of international standards for the preservation and access of metadata, and the global consequences of "ASCII imperialism" and the use of English as the lingua franca of the Internet. Accompanying these in-depth critiques are a series of examples that depict an almost infinite variety of standards, from the controversies surrounding the European Union's supposed regulation of banana curvature to the minimum health requirements for immigrants at Ellis Island, conflicting (and ever-increasing) food portion sizes, and the impact of standardized punishment metrics like "Three Strikes" laws. The volume begins with a pioneering essay from Susan Leigh Star and Martha Lampland on the nature of standards in everyday life that brings together strands from the several fields represented in the book. In an appendix, the editors provide a guide for teaching courses in this emerging interdisciplinary field, which they term "infrastructure studies," making Standards and Their Stories ideal for scholars, students, and those curious about why coffins are becoming wider, for instance, or why the Financial Accounting Standards Board refused to classify September 11 as an "extraordinary" event.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Science, Sociology, Academic, Information Science

244 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2008

Reviews

[TK Keanini · Rating 5 out of 5]

When we standardize something for a community there will be consequences. IMHO, Understanding these issues ethnographically is much more useful than mathematically.

[Theresa MacPhail · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a terrific collection of essays by people who self-avowedly study "boring things." As it turns out, boring things aren't so boring after all. Authors reexamine the infrastructure of our daily lives with essays that are part history, part philosophy, and part great story-telling. Also, I loved the interstices between the chapters. It's the first "academic" book that was both well-written and didn't take itself too seriously. In that vein, I would recommend it to anyone who has ever thought about why English is the dominant web language, how women's sizes are "standardized", or how pharmaceutical companies come up with "standard" doses.

It's sad that Susan Leigh Star is no longer with us. She was such a beacon to those of us in academia who wanted to bridge disciplinary divides, write well, and carve out our own paths. With some of the ideas proffered in this volume, however, her legacy is sure to continue to inspire future researchers like myself.

[Chloe Noland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book deals with one of my favorite topics in information science: standards and classification theory. Although wanting for more diverse topics and extended bibliographies (people also just need to get more research into this field, imao) the essays -- written by computer scientists, information analysts, global economists, and more -- all dealt with chronicling, analyzing, and understanding the origin of man-made standards and the ramifications these standards have had on society and everyday life. Some of them were hilarious (what constitutes a banana being "abnormally curved," and thus disqualified for import into the EU countries), downright strange (the standard size of coffins has been increasing with obesity rates, and pretty soon this will affect plot-sizing in cemeteries) or somewhat dry, albeit informative (the history of how insurance policies were shaped by disease/rate of risk stats in the 1800's). The book was also peppered throughout with funny news articles showcasing how standards make for bizarre and sometimes tragic consequences when put into use (I didn't know that railway standard gauge length actually originates from the length of a horses's butt in Roman times, nor had I heard of the dude who almost ended up serving a life sentence for a workmen's comp case, simply because of CA's Three Strikes Law). I have always been fascinated by the ways that our culture, politics, and personal incentives contribute to the creation of the rules we use to operate everyday functions and needs -- and, as the authors point out, this is not a widely explored subject, as "infrastructure is designed to become invisible as it is stabilized" (p. 207). This contradiction itself mirrors a very similar problem found in library classification -- how to choose the best representation for the widest amount of people, without marginalizing specific groups? One standard will always benefit one type of user at the expense of another, but often bureaucratic institutions try to make us believe that one box is acceptable for all, and hide the evidence (along with history of implementation) that led up to this belief, as a way to further confuse and mislead us to accept that we should all, basically, accept the same standards, and ignore divergent consequences. Not only is this INSANE, but it's not sustainable. Obviously this doesn't apply to all things (it seems like everyone is doing okay with doorknobs the way they are) but this book focuses on the most nuanced cases, which is what made it such a fascinating read.

[Anna]

I don't believe in statistics. The bell curve is a fabrication - doesn't correspond to reality (and reality doesn't correspond or conform to it.) I don't believe that people can be reduced to quantities. So I hope this book is critical of such things and not praising.