The moral economy of grades and standards
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that grades and standards are part of the moral economy of the modern world, and that they both set norms for behavior and standardize (create uniformity).
About: This article is published in Journal of Rural Studies.The article was published on 2000-07-01. It has received 313 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Generally Accepted Auditing Standards & Standardization.
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Book•
01 Jan 1999
TL;DR: In Sorting Things Out, Bowker and Star as mentioned in this paper explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world and examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary.
Abstract: What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.
4,480 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Veblen's analysis of the U.S. economy has been claimed and rejected both by sociologists and economists as being one of theirs as mentioned in this paper, but it has enduring value today.
Abstract: Veblen has been claimed and rejected both by sociologists and economists as being one of theirs. He enriched and attacked both disciplines, as he did so many others: philosophy, history, social psychology, politics, and linguistics. Because he took all knowledge as necessary and relevant to adequate understanding, Veblen was a holistic analyst of the social process. First published in 1904, this classic analysis of the U.S. economy has enduring value today. In it, Veblen posited a theory of business fluctuations and economic growth which included chronic depression and inflation. He predicted the socioeconomic changes that would occur as a result: militarism, imperialism, fascism, consumerism, and the development of the mass media as well as the corporate bureaucracy. Douglas Dowd's introduction places the volume within the traditions of both macroeconomics and microeconomics, tracing Veblen's place among social thinkers, and the place of this volume in the body of his work.
1,047 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that global value chains are becoming increasingly "buyer-driven" even though they are characterized by "hands-off" forms of co-ordination between "lead firms" and their immediate suppliers.
Abstract: Convention theory helps refine our understanding of the governance of global value chains through its analysis of ‘quality’. In this article, it is argued that global value chains are becoming increasingly ‘buyer-driven’, even though they are characterized by ‘hands-off’ forms of co-ordination between ‘lead firms’ and their immediate suppliers. This is because lead firms have been able to embed complex quality information into widely accepted standards and codification and certification procedures. As suggested by convention theory, their success in doing so has depended on defining and managing value chain-specific quality attributes that are attuned to broader narratives about quality that circulate within society more generally.
805 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...…at using convention theory to enrich other approaches have been carried out in relation to global value chains (Daviron and Gibbon 2002; Daviron and Ponte forthcoming) and agro-food networks (Barham 2002; Busch 2000; Busch and Tanaka 1996; Freidberg 2003; Murdoch and Miele 1999; Murdoch et al ....
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01 Jan 1982
TL;DR: The central unifying theme in the Manuscripts is the alienation of labour under capitalist conditions of private ownership and its transcendence and abolition under communism as discussed by the authors, which is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature.
Abstract: The central unifying theme in the Manuscripts is the alienation of labour under capitalist conditions of private ownership and its transcendence and abolition under communism. The doctrine of total emancipation which, as I have argued, was crucial in enabling Marx to assimilate ‘class’ and the ‘division of labour’ in his work is much more clearly articulated here and eloquently expressed. Communism, Marx argues, is ‘the positive transcendence of all estrangement’; the abolition of private property, communism:
is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature — the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and knows itself to be this solution.27
The vision of communism Marx unfolds in the Manuscripts derives much of its force from his remarkable analysis of the alienation of labour and is clearly underpinned by a preconception of truly human, free productive activity. Man’s productive interchange with nature is in fact taken as the defining characteristic of the species: ‘the productive life is the life of the species’; and Marx is careful to point out that while an animal can also be said to engage in production it ‘only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young’.
776 citations
TL;DR: Reviewing the relevance of standards and standardization in diverse theoretical traditions and sociological subfields, it is called for careful empirical analysis of the specific and unintended consequences of different sorts of standards operating in distinct social domains.
Abstract: Standards and standardization aim to render the world equivalent across cultures, time, and geography. Standards are ubiquitous but underappreciated tools for regulating and organizing social life in modernity, and they lurk in the background of many sociological works. Reviewing the relevance of standards and standardization in diverse theoretical traditions and sociological subfields, we point to the emergence and institutionalization of standards, the difficulties of making standards work, resistance to standardization, and the multiple outcomes of standards. Rather than associating standardization with totalizing narratives of globalization or dehumanization, we call for careful empirical analysis of the specific and unintended consequences of different sorts of standards operating in distinct social domains.
721 citations
Cites background from "The moral economy of grades and sta..."
...Marx’s analysis of capitalism examined the standardization of conditions for economic activity in a capitalist market, as well as the spread of the commodity as a standard mode of economic exchange (Marx 1867 [1977]; see also Busch 2000)....
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...Yet it is hard to see how standards can be purely good while standardization is wholly bad, given that standardization presumes the existence of standards, whereas standards cannot endure with any potency unless they are standardized across social domains (Busch 2000)....
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...To standardize transportation is inevitably to standardize the perceptions and tastes of travelers (Schivelbusch 1977); to standardize policies is to standardize those administered by them (Busch 2000)....
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References
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TL;DR: Zimbardo et al. as discussed by the authors studied the effects of severity of initiation and high penalties for exiting from public goods (and evils) on consumer reactions to price rise and quality decline in the case of several connoisseur goods.
Abstract: 1. Introduction and Doctrinal Background Enter "exit" and "voice" Latitude for deterioration, and slack in economic thought Exit and voice as impersonations of economics and politics 2. Exit How the exit option works Competition as collusive behavior 3. Voice Voice as a residual of exit Voice as an alternative to exit 4. A Special Difficulty in Combining Exit and Voice 5. How Monopoly Can be Comforted by Competition 6. On Spatial Duopoly and the Dynamics of Two-Party Systems 7. A Theory of Loyalty The activation of voice as a function of loyalty Loyalist behavior as modified by severe initiation and high penalties for exit Loyalty and the difficult exit from public goods (and evils) 8. Exit and Voice in American Ideology and Practice 9. The Elusive Optimal Mix of Exit and Voice Appendixes A. A simple diagrammatic representation of voice and exit B. The choice between voice and exit C. The reversal phenomenon D. Consumer reactions to price rise and quality decline in the case of several connoisseur goods F. The effects of severity of initiation on activism: design for an experiment (in collaboration with Philip G. Zimbardo and Mark Snyder) Index
6,810 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1963
TL;DR: Fifty years since first publication, E P Thompson's revolutionary account of working-class culture and ideals is published in Penguin Modern Classics, with a new introduction by historian Michael Kenny as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Fifty years since first publication, E P Thompson's revolutionary account of working-class culture and ideals is published in Penguin Modern Classics, with a new introduction by historian Michael Kenny This classic and imaginative account of working-class society in its formative years, 1780 to 1832, revolutionized our understanding of English social history E P Thompson shows how the working class took part in its own making and re-creates the whole-life experience of people who suffered loss of status and freedom, who underwent degradation, and who yet created a cultured and political consciousness of great vitality Reviews: "A dazzling vindication of the lives and aspirations of the then - and now once again - neglected culture of working-class England" (Martin Kettle, Observer) "Superbly readable a moving account of the culture of the self-taught in an age of social and intellectual deprivation" (Asa Briggs, Financial Times) "Thompson's work combines passion and intellect, the gifts of the poet, the narrator and the analyst" (E J Hobsbawm, Independent) "An event not merely in the writing of English history but in the politics of our century" (Michael Foot, Times Literary Supplement) "The greatest of our socialist historians" (Terry Eagleton, New Statesman) About the author: E P Thompson was born in 1924 and read history at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, graduating in 1946 An academic, writer and acclaimed historian, his first major work was a biography of William Morris The Making of the English Working Class was instantly recognized as a classic on its publication in 1963 and secured his position as one of the leading social historians of his time Thompson was also an active campaigner and key figure in the ending of the Cold War He died in 1993, survived by his wife and two sons
4,558 citations
TL;DR: Hirschman as discussed by the authors discusses the responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states by Albert O. Hirschman, while in residence at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Abstract: Summer 1994 272 Professor Hirschman wrote this book while in residence at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States by Albert O. Hirschman, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, © 1970 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
4,191 citations
"The moral economy of grades and sta..." refers background in this paper
...As Albert O. Hirschman (1970) has suggested in another context, growers may respond in through exit, voice or loyalty: They may (1) discontinue growing tomatoes, (2) attempt to have the standards modi"ed (or challenge the way a particular lot is graded), or (3) conform to these standards.7 In…...
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TL;DR: The food riot in eighteenth-century England is concerned in this article, where the common people can scarcely be taken as historical agents before the French Revolution. But this view can conceal what may be described as a spasmodic view of popular history.
Abstract: WE HAVE BEEN WARNED IN RECENT YEARS, BY GEORGE RUDE AND OTHERS, against the loose employment of the term \"mob\". I wish in this article to extend the warning to the term \"riot\", especially where the food riot in eighteenth-century England is concerned. This simple four-letter word can conceal what may be described as a spasmodic view of popular history. According to this view the common people can scarcely be taken as historical agents before the French Revolution. Before this period they intrude occasionally and
3,206 citations
"The moral economy of grades and sta..." refers background or result in this paper
...An outrage to these moral assumptions, quite as much as actual deprivation, was the usual occasion for direct actiona (Thompson, 1971, p. 79, 1991)....
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...This is in contrast to the legal prohibitions against exchanges based on samples found in Britain until the late 18th century (Thompson, 1971)....
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...In 1772, four years before Adam Smith wrote his classic on political economy, The Wealth of Nations, the laws against forestalling1 were repealed (Thompson, 1963; 1971)....
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