Metric Power

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introducing Metric Power

   • David Beer

   Pages 1-35

3. Measurement

   • David Beer

   Pages 37-75

4. Circulation

   • David Beer

   Pages 77-125

5. Possibility

   • David Beer

   Pages 127-168

6. Conclusion: The Intersections and Imbrications of Metric Power

   • David Beer

   Pages 169-188

7. Coda: Metric Power and the Production of Uncertainty (How Does Metric Power Make Us Feel?)

   • David Beer

   Pages 189-215

8. Back Matter

   Pages 217-223

   PDF

This book examines the powerful and intensifying role that metrics play in ordering and shaping our everyday lives. Focusing upon the interconnections between measurement, circulation and possibility, the author explores the interwoven relations between power and metrics. He draws upon a wide-range of interdisciplinary resources to place these metrics within their broader historical, political and social contexts. More specifically, he illuminates the various ways that metrics implicate our lives – from our work, to our consumption and our leisure, through to our bodily routines and the financial and organisational structures that surround us. Unravelling the power dynamics that underpin and reside within the so-called big data revolution, he develops the central concept of Metric Power along with a set of conceptual resources for thinking critically about the powerful role played by metrics in the social world today.

• Big data
• Media
• Cultural politics
• Social ordering
• Algorithms
• Data circulations

“The book offers an extensive and well-referenced account of how metrics have begun to infiltrate social and cultural life. It is a text that will be widely used and discussed and its ideas displayed on whiteboards in classrooms across the world … Beer’s book expands the concept of measurement across a set of literatures in cultural studies, sociology and philosophy. Indeed, what very quickly stands out about this book is the breadth of literature it covers in these areas.” (Phoebe V. Moore, Information, Communication & Society, February, 2018)



“David Beer … outlines the rise of the metric and the role of metrics in shaping everyday life. … the book makes important reading for anyone concerned with how our daily experiences of technologies, organisations, and social institutions, are shaped, unequally, by the power of metrics.” (Dave O'Brien, New Books network, newbooksnetwork.com, August, 2017)

“Performance, value, measurement, data, indicators, statistics, ratings, rankings, metrics – we live in age where there’s an attempt to capture everything in numbers and to compare, evaluate and act on those numbers. In Metric Power David Beer carefully and insightfully unpacks the politics and effects of this mode of calculative and anticipatory governance.  The book is essential reading for those interested in the politics of data and the work that metrics perform.” (Rob Kitchin, National University of Ireland Maynooth, Ireland)

“Metric Power makes an important and timely contribution to the emerging field of critical data studies. It weaves together scholarship relevant to the topic of metric power and provides reflection on how such power operates, with what consequences, and how these consequences are lived, felt and resisted. Despite engaging with complex theory it is extremely accessible to read. In all of these ways the book represents a significant contribution to this growing area.” (Helen Kennedy, University of Sheffield, UK)

“In this age of the ascendancy of big data, the time is ripe for a new sociological analysis of metrics. David Beer does a superb job here laying out a critical social approach to why we trust and rely so much on quantification and measurement. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the hold that numbers have over us, the politics of this and what the implications are for society and social relations.” (Deborah Lupton, University of Canberra, Australia)

• Department of Sociology, University of York, York, United Kingdom

  David Beer

David Beer is Reader in Sociology at the University of York, UK.

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