Drawing Lines with Numbers: Measurement and Quantification as Classification Instruments

• In Event: 543 - Section on Sociology of Culture Paper Session. Culture and Cognition

Abstract

This paper is focused on how quantification and measurement are used in some forms of classifications to underline boundaries that separate islands of meaning and delineate chunks of reality. The main thesis of the paper is that sometimes measurement can produce quantitative differences among qualitatively equal realities, and classification uses those quantitative differences to demarcate and segregate entities in the qualitative continuum of reality. Several examples are presented on how these phenomena appear in various spheres of social life (e.g. institutional definitions of what accounts for beauty, intelligence, and poverty).

Author

• Hector Vera, National Autonomous University-Mexico