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Standards. We apply them, uphold them, or fail to meet them. But how do they get made? Through twelve ethnographic case studies, The Social Life of Standards reveals how standards – political and technical tools for organizing society – are developed, applied, subverted, contested, and reassembled by local communities interacting with norms often created by others. Contributors explore standards at work across different countries and contexts, such as Ebola biomedical safety precautions in Senegal, Colombian farmers contesting politicized seed regulations, and the application of Indigenous standards to Canadian environmental assessments. They emphasize the uncomfortable fit between the inconsistent implementation of standards in the real world and the non-negotiable criteria presupposed by external forces. The Social Life of Standards provides support for a reflexive process that involves local engagement. Ultimately, the goal should be to reach a balance between evidence-based science and the social contexts that can inform more useful and appropriate standards.
The standards of rationality are treated in this book as certain regulators of social life. They are compared to the rudders of the great vessels constituted by social communities. The diversity exhibited by those standards do not only result from the differences of time and space of their implementation, but also from the differences in the sets of ideas put forward by the leading social thinkers accompanied by the different characteristics of their designated audiences. (Series: Development in Humanities - Vol. 7)
Examining the increasingly powerful role of standards in the governing of economic, political and social life, this book draws upon governmentality and actor network theory to explore how standards and standardizing projects are articulated and rendered workable in practice, and the objects, subjects and forms of identity to which this gives rise.
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 lively survey…her research and insights make us conscious of how we, today, use books.”—John Sutherland, The New York Times Book Review Two centuries before the advent of radio, television, and motion pictures, books were a cherished form of popular entertainment and an integral component of domestic social life. In this fascinating and vivid history, Abigail Williams explores the ways in which shared reading shaped the lives and literary culture of the eighteenth century, offering new perspectives on how books have been used by their readers, and the part they have played in middle-class homes and families. Drawing on marginalia, letters and diaries, library catalogues, elocution manuals, subscription lists, and more, Williams offers fresh and fascinating insights into reading, performance, and the history of middle-class home life. “Williams’s charming pageant of anecdotes…conjures a world strikingly different from our own but surprisingly similar in many ways, a time when reading was on the rise and whole worlds sprang up around it.”—TheWashington Post
This book details the primary concepts of Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), integration of social aspects in product life cycles, quantification of social impacts in S-LCA, impact categorization in S-LCA, methodological aspects of S-LCA, and detailed case studies. As the societal implications of producing a product are coming to take on a new importance, the concept of Social Life Cycle Assessment has recently been developed and is becoming increasingly prominent. However, S-LCA is still in its infancy and its impact categories for many industrial segments are still under development.
The Social Life of Gender provides a comprehensive approach to gender as an organizing principle of institutions, history, and unequal interpersonal relations. This new title will develop students’ capacity to use gender analysis to question social life more broadly, by presenting a critical sociology based on the unique insights gleaned from the study of gender. Through bold, concise, and intellectually generative writing, the authors explore culture, geopolitics, and the economy, providing students with a succinct, accessible, and critical grasp of core debates in the sociology of gender.
This edited volume addresses memory practices among youth, families, cultural workers, activists, and engaged citizens in Lebanon and Morocco. In making a claim for ‘the social life of memory,’ the introduction discusses a particular research field of memory studies, elaborating an approach to memory in terms of social production and engagement. The Arab Spring is evoked to draw attention to new rifts within and between history and remembrance in the regions of North Africa and the Middle East. As authoritarian forms of governance are challenged, official panoramic narratives are confronted with a multiplicity of memories of violent pasts. The eight chapters trace personal and public inventories of violence, trauma, and testimony, addressing memory in cinema, in newspapers and periodicals, as an experience of public environments, through transnational and diasporic mediums, and amongst younger generations.
Between 1200 and 1520 medieval English society went through a series of upheavals: this was an age of war, pestilence and rebellion. This book explores the realities of life of the people who lived through those stirring times. It looks in turn at aristocrats, peasants, townsmen, wage-earners and paupers, and examines how they obtained their incomes and how they spent them. This revised edition (1998) includes a substantial new concluding chapter and an updated bibliography.
The sixth edition of Peter Kivisto’s popular anthology, Illuminating Social Life, continues to demonstrate to students how social theories can help them make sense of the swirling events and perplexing phenomena that they encounter in their daily lives. A perfect complement for sociological theory courses, this updated edition includes 13 original essays by leading scholars in the field that help students better understand and appreciate the relevance of social theory. Once again, Peter Kivisto′s collection illuminates the connection between sociological theory and the realities that students are faced with every day —from the Internet, alcohol use, and body building to shopping malls, the working world, and fast-food restaurants. Contributor to the SAGE Teaching Innovations and Professional Development Award