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

Description

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. A Word on Statistics by Wislawa Szymborska......Page 7 Contents......Page 9 Acknowledgments......Page 13 Two Representations of the Seven Deadly Sins: Then and Now......Page 17 1. Reckoning with Standards by Susan Leigh Star and Martha Lampland......Page 19 Standards Where You Least Expect Them by Martha Lampland......Page 41 Padilla Case Changed a Lot in 5 Years. The Trial of the Onetime "Dirty Bomb" Suspect Is Opening; An Alleged Jihad Form May Be Key by Carol J. Williams......Page 42 Penalty for Crossing an Al Qaeda Boss? A Nasty Memo by Sebastian Rotella......Page 43 Separate, Together by Alice Dreger......Page 44 Ellis Island by Susan Leigh Star......Page 49 2. Beyond the Standard Human? by Steven Epstein......Page 51 The Range of Growth Parameters for Healthy Infants......Page 71 Portion Creep: Standards and Supersizing by Judith Treas......Page 72 A Bulge in Misses 8? Digital Scanners Resize America by Marcia Biederman......Page 74 Investment Allocation by Age by Judith Treas......Page 79 3. Age in Standards and Standards for Age: Institutionalizing Chronological Age as Biographical Necessity by Judith Treas......Page 81 Coffins Expand with Occupants......Page 105 Rebuilding Wall Street: Accountants, in a Reversal, Say Costs from the Attack Aren't "Extraordinary" by Steve Liesman......Page 107 4. Double Standards: The History of Standardizing Humans in Modern Life Insurance by Martin Lengwiler......Page 111 The Pernicious Accretion of Codes, Standards, and Dates: The People of the State of California v. Vernell Gillard by Martha Lampland......Page 131 Standards without Infrastructure by Elizabeth Cullen Dunn......Page 134 5. Classifying Laborers: Instinct, Property, and the Psychology of Productivity in Hungary (1920-1956) by Martha Lampland......Page 139 EPA to Kill New Arsenic Standards: Whitman Cites Debate on Drinking Water Risk......Page 159 Arsenic and Water Don't Mix......Page 162 EPA Wants Review of Sulfur Standards Whitman Postpones Clinton Rule Requiring Clean-Burning Diesel Fuel......Page 163 6. Metadata Standards: Trajectories and Enactment in the Life of an Ontology by Florence Millerand and Geoffrey C. Bowker......Page 165 Horse's Ass......Page 183 To Avoid Fuel Limits, Subaru Is Turning a Sedan into a Truck by Danny Hakim......Page 185 Flexibility Urged against Pollution by Eric Pianin......Page 189 U.S. Walks Away from Treaty on Greenhouse Gases: White House Wants Developing Nations to Meet Standards as Well......Page 191 7. ASCII Imperialism by Daniel Pargman and Jacob Palme......Page 193 Bananas, Eu rocrats, and Modern Myths: Standards between Power and Agreement by Martin Lengwiler......Page 217 Chocolate Directive Now Agreed......Page 220 Standards Proliferate Even for (Seemingly) Simple Objects......Page 222 Appendix: How to Unravel Standards: Teaching Infrastructure Studies by Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Star......Page 223 References......Page 231 Contributors......Page 251 Index......Page 253