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Journal ArticleDOI

The moral economy of grades and standards

01 Jul 2000-Journal of Rural Studies (Pergamon)-Vol. 16, Iss: 3, pp 273-283
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.
Citations
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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

Journal ArticleDOI
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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Book ChapterDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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)....

    [...]

  • ...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)....

    [...]

  • ...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)....

    [...]

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The argument may be distilled as follows: Shapin and Schaffer dilated and developed Sprat's analogies and metaphors with the persistence and prolixity of the Society's cynosure, Robert Boyle, and the experimental life.
Abstract: STEVEN SHAPIN and SIMON SCHAFFER, Leviathan and the air-pump. Hobbes, Boyle, and the experimental life. Including a translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris, by Simon Schaffer, Princeton University Press, 1985, 8vo, pp. xiv, 440, illus., £43.00. In his History ofthe Royal Society ofLondon, published in 1667 as an explanation and defence ofmen who spent their time weighing the air and anatomizing beetles, Thomas Sprat threw out many striking analogies between contemporary politics and the activities he defended. The Society fitted perfectly with the spirit of reconciliation and tolerance supposed to characterize the Restoration: it forbade discussion of politics or religion; it limited dissent to matters about which agreement could be reached; it stuck to matters of fact; it promoted industry, sobriety, good judgment, and balance; it opposed enthusiasts, dogmatists, radicals, and sinners. Shapin and Schaffer have dilated and developed Sprat's analogies and metaphors with the persistence and prolixity of the Society's cynosure, Robert Boyle. Their argument may be distilled as follows. Boyle wished to set aside a "social space" (the term is theirs) for the cultivation of experimental philosophy; he also wanted to demonstrate to society at large how civic and religious dissent might be managed peacefully and productively; in fact, he wanted both, for, as Shapin and Schaffer claim, "solutions to the problem of knowledge are solutions to the problem of social order" (p. 332). They discern three "technologies" in Boyle's effort to establish his "experimental language" (p. 49), his "disciplined collective social structure" (p. 78), his "space . . . so securely bounded that dispute could occur safely within [it]" (p. 303), his "experimental form of life" (p. 314). The technologies were: the material, that is, experimental apparatus, of which the air-pump was the exemplar; the literary, or wordy descriptions of experiments performed, of the witnesses present and their reliability, and of the machines themselves; and the social, or rules of engagement in philosophical debate, the pre-eminence of the matter offact, and the down-grading or exclusion ofconjectures or theories about the causes and principles of certified phenomena. Withall, the experimental philosopher must be modest, open and flexible: "Till a man is sure he is infallible", Boyle wrote, "it is not fit for him to be unalterable." These "technologies" drew fire from the plentiful furnace ofThomas Hobbes, whom Shapin and Schaffer use as a detector of the aspects of Boyle's programme offensive to contemporaries who differed from him politically. Hobbes pointed out that the material technology leaked; that the literary technology, at least in respect ofthe testimony ofwitnesses, had no force ("no infinite number of grave and learned men" make certainty, "but authority"); and that the social technology misconstrued the nature of knowledge. By making the matter of fact, and not the underlying principle, the main object of investigation, one forfeits the chance at truth and certainty and has no reliable way to exclude serious and dangerous error. Boyle and his precious air-pump would be an ongoing peril as long as experimental philosophers waffled over the nature of the "vacuum". Hobbes knew from principle that a true void space, being immaterial, could not be; others not so guided, like the noisy Cambridge philosopher Henry More, and the demonstrator of witches, Joseph Glanvil, admitted the void, and imagined that Boyle's experiments proved the existence of spaces for angels and spirits to play in. Hobbes's dogmatism in natural philosophy was of a piece with his concept of the State. In philosophy, the force ofreason, working from sure principles in the style of Euclidean geometry, must compel assent; "who is so stupid", he asked, "as both to mistake in geometry, and also to persist in it, when another detects his error to him?" In the State, the King's authority should prevail over all dissent and dissenters in both civil and religious matters. Just here, loose talk about vacuums threatened the peace. For priests would set up as experts on the immaterial, and construct an independent base ofpower on the strength of their pseudo-knowledge, as they had in the past; and so bring about subversions and rebellions. The method ofcreating and certifying knowledge, and the problem of establishing social order, forced Boyle and Hobbes to sharply

998 citations


"The moral economy of grades and sta..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Thus, the standards themselves must be standardized, so that the senses are corrected and disciplined (Shapin and Scha!er, 1985)....

    [...]

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 1982
TL;DR: In this article, the temporal structure, fluxes, energy spectra and coordinates of the sources of gamma-ray bursts detected in the KONUS experiment on Venera 11 andVenera 12 space probes were presented.
Abstract: Data are presented on the temporal structure, fluxes, energy spectra and coordinates of the sources of gamma-ray bursts detected in the KONUS experiment on Venera 11 and Venera 12 space probes in the period September 1978 to May 1979. The statistical distributions of gamma bursts in duration, intensity, and peak power, as well as the distribution of the burst sources over the celestial sphere presented are based on the updated KONUS information obtained until February 1980.

960 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

905 citations


"The moral economy of grades and sta..." refers background in this paper

  • ...Are they solely ways of reducing transaction costs (Williamson, 1975, 1994)?...

    [...]

Book
01 Jan 1904
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 discussed by the authors, 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.

902 citations

Book
01 Jan 1991
TL;DR: The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century as discussed by the authors reviewed time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism the sales of wives rough music, the patricians and the plebs custom, law and common right.
Abstract: Introduction - custom and culture the patricians and the plebs custom, law and common right the moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century the moral economy reviewed time, work-discipline and industrial capitalism the sales of wives rough music.

854 citations