Session 4: What happens when we govern with numbers?

(Reflections from Stefanie Habersang)

While the previous day was all about interpretive data science, the second day of the workshop focused more broadly on the politics of big data. The morning session started with the amazing Wendy Espeland and her talk about “What happens when we govern with numbers” or how do people do things with numbers and what are the sociological consequences? While Prof Espeland acknowledged the positive side of quantification, for example that it can make previously invisible groups visible (e.g. large-scale studies about LTGB movements); she also emphasizes more critically the performative aspect of numbers. Instead of attributing essential values to governing with numbers we must understand its implications on power. Wendy Espeland used three powerful examples to critically reflect on governance with numbers: sentencing guidelines, university rankings, and cost-benefit analysis. For example, university rankings were initially developed to provide information and transparency helping people to make better decisions which school to attend. Over time, however, university rankings have merged into something new: a regime of surveillance. This regime locks universities into a competitive system that forces deans to care more about a “winning season” than working toward long-term impact. While this was an unintentional shift in governance with numbers the consequences are very real and irreversible. Hence, quantification can reorganize power structures, just as the emergence of college rankings chipped away at the power of university deans.

The main take-away from this speech was that numbers do things and they do organize social life. As such, we should be worried and sensitive to the unintended consequences of governance by numbers. Once we quantify something and its gets out we cannot control what other people do with it. Thus, Wendy Espeland challenges us to consider five rules when we study governance by numbers: (1) Follow the number over time, (2) What happens to power and accountability, (3) What happens to status, (4) What happens to visibility, and finally (5) How can the number be challenged? The powerful message that remains from this talk is that ethics, morality and politics are fundamentally intertwined with numbers. All of us who work with numbers and interpret numbers have a responsibility to constantly ask: “What is there that we don’t see? How can we make the invisible visible? Who benefits and why?”