Socioplastics 11979 How Different Qualities Become Comparable
Comparison begins with a decision about what can be translated into a shared unit. CommensurationRig identifies the apparatus that converts unlike qualities into scores, rankings or exchangeable values: its instruments, conventions, categories and institutional interests. A city may compare neighbourhoods through a single liveability index combining access, safety, green space and property value. The score appears compact; the construction of its components determines which forms of life enter the comparison and how much weight each receives. Emily Rosamond studies the political and economic conditions through which data acquire value. Mark Andrejevic examines how automated media and data-driven systems shape knowledge and governance. Their work locates calculation within infrastructures that select, format and circulate observations. In a municipal dashboard, accessibility might be represented by distance to a bus stop, while reliability, affordability, disability access and route safety receive different weights or remain outside the index. The apparatus makes some observations portable and leaves others attached to local accounts. An audit would reconstruct the process from observation to decision: which variables were selected, how they were normalised, who assigned weights, which records were excluded and what alternative configurations produce. It would retain the dimensions compressed by the final score and show how rankings change when assumptions change. Researchers could compare the index with resident accounts, policy outcomes and resource allocation. The method becomes consequential when an identifiable apparatus demonstrably alters investment, eligibility or public attention; otherwise the calculation remains a description whose effects require further evidence. CommensurationRig turns the construction of comparability into an object of research. A number can be interpreted alongside the choices that give it force: categories, thresholds, missing data and institutional purposes. Publishing those choices allows others to inspect the index, reproduce its calculations and consider alternative weights. The marker does not make comparison impossible; it makes comparison more accountable. Its value lies in showing how unlike qualities become equivalent for a particular decision, and how the resulting equivalence redistributes attention and material resources.
REFERENCES
Andrejevic, M. (2013) Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know. New York: Routledge.
Rosamond, E. (2016) “Data’s Capital”, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 17(1), pp. 103–117.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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