Socioplastics 11827 When a Number Starts Giving Orders
A measure can begin as a description and acquire authority over the activity it records. A university may count publications to assess research, then link funding to the count. Departments adjust hiring, publishing schedules and research questions to improve that score. MeasurementDominion describes this transfer of authority: the indicator becomes the accepted language of value and shapes what institutions reward. Thomas Piketty uses long historical series to make patterns of inequality available for public debate. Kate Crawford examines data infrastructures and their social and environmental costs. Orit Halpern studies the history of data-driven environments and the construction of smartness. Their work shows how quantitative evidence can illuminate structural patterns while also directing attention to the systems that collect, define and use it. A metric audit could document the purpose of an indicator, its data source, the decisions linked to it and the practices it encourages. Researchers would compare the measured outcome with other evidence of quality, access or public benefit. Interviews could identify how people adapt their work to the measure. The audit would then show where a metric informs judgment and where its criteria need revision or additional forms of evidence. MeasurementDominion helps institutions examine how numbers shape their own conduct. It supports quantitative analysis by making the authority attached to a measure explicit and reviewable. A metric becomes more useful when its purpose, limits and consequences are available for public discussion. If an indicator changes behaviour, the audit should record those effects alongside the values the measure was designed to describe.
REFERENCES
Crawford, K. (2021) Atlas of AI. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Halpern, O. (2015) Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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