Calculating the Social: Standards and the Reconfiguration of Governing

235 Pages·2010·0.737 MB·English

by  Vaughan Higgins, Wendy Larner (eds.)

Calculating the Social
Standards and the Reconfiguration
of Governing
Edited by
Vaughan Higgins and Wendy Larner
Calculating the Social
Also by Vaughan Higgins
RURAL GOVERNANCE: International Perspectives (co-edited)
CONSTRUCTING REFORM: Economic Expertise and the Governing
of Agricultural Change in Australia
AGRICULTURAL GOVERNANCE: Globalization and the New Politics
of Regulation (co-edited)
PEDAGOGICAL MACHINES: ICTs and Neoliberal Governance of the University
ENVIRONMENT, SOCIETY AND NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT:
Theoretical Perspectives from Australasia and the Americas (co-edited)
Also by Wendy Larner
THE POINT IS TO CHANGE IT: Geographies of Hope and Survival in an Age
of Crises (co-edited)
GLOBAL GOVERNMENTALITY: New Perspectives on International Rule
(co-edited)
Calculating the Social
Standards and the Reconfiguration
of Governing
Edited by
Vaughan Higgins
Monash University, Australia
and
Wendy Larner
University of Bristol, UK
Selection and editorial matter © Vaughan Higgins and Wendy Larner 2010
Individual chapters © their respective authors 2010
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-57931-6
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and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2010 by
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ISBN 978-1-349-36794-8 ISBN 978-0-230-28967-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230289673
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Calculating the social: standards and the reconfiguration of
governing / edited by Vaughan Higgins, Wendy Larner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978–0–230–57931–6 (hardback)
1. Standardization. 2. Power (Social sciences) 3. Social structure.
4. Social sciences. I. Higgins, Vaughan, 1974– II. Larner, Wendy.
HD62.C25 2010
389(cid:2).6—dc22
2010023888
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgements xii
1 Standards and Standardization as a Social Scientific Problem 1
Vaughan Higgins and Wendy Larner
Part I The Global and Local Politics of Standardizing 19
2 Calculating Hybrids 21
Peter Miller, Liisa Kurunmäki, and Ted O’Leary
3 Gendering Codes of Conduct: Chiquita Bananas
and Nicaraguan Women Workers 38
Marina Prieto-Carrón and Wendy Larner
4 The Practice of Third-Party Certification:
Enhancing Environmental Sustainability
and Social Justice in the Global South? 56
Carmen Bain and Maki Hatanaka
Part II Technologies of Governing and the Standardizing
of the Social 75
5 E-Government and the Production of Standardized
Individuality 77
Paul Henman and Mitchell Dean
6 New Modes of Governance and the Standardization of
Nursing Competencies: An Australian Case Study 94
Anni Dugdale and Laurie Grealish
7 Industry Analysts and the Labour of Comparison 112
Neil Pollock
8 Sticking Plasters and the Standardizations of Everyday Life 131
Mike Michael
Part III The Contestation and Adaptation
of Standardizing Practices 149
9 Local Experiments with Global Certificates: How Russian
Software Testers are Inventing Themselves as a Profession 151
Melanie Feakins
v
vi Contents
10 Adapting Standards: The Case of Environmental
Management Systems in Australia 167
Vaughan Higgins, Jacqui Dibden and Chris Cocklin
11 Standards, Orphan Drugs, and Pharmaceutical Markets 185
Carlos Novas
Part IV Conclusion 203
12 From Standardization to Standardizing Work 205
Vaughan Higgins and Wendy Larner
Index 219
Notes on Contributors
Carmen Bain is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Iowa
State University. Her research interests include the political economy of
global agri-food systems, international development and social studies of
science and technology. She has conducted research in Chile, Ghana, New
Zealand and the US. Her work has been published in the journals Rural
Sociology and Food Policy and several edited volumes including Agricultural
Governance: Globalization and the New Politics of Regulation (edited by
Vaughan Higgins and Geoffrey Lawrence, 2005); Supermarkets and Agri-food
Supply Chains (edited by David Burch and Geoffrey Lawrence, 2007); and
Between the Local and the Global: Confronting Complexity in the Contemporary
Food Sector (edited by Terry Marsden and Jonathon Murdoch, 2006).
Chris Cocklin is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation) at
James Cook University, Queensland, Australia. He has written widely
on regulatory change and sustainability in a rural context, on land
use change and on rural communities and environmental issues. With
Ian Bowler and Chris Bryant he edited The Sustainability of Rural Systems
(Kluwer, 2002) and, with Jacqui Dibden, Sustainability and Change in
Rural Australia (UNSW Press, 2005).
Mitchell Dean is Professor of Sociology and formerly Dean of the Division
of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy at Macquarie University,
Australia. He is currently research professor in the Centre for Research on
Social Inclusion. Mitchell is the author of four books and other publi-
cations which draw upon various aspects of Foucauldian scholarship.
These works include The Constitution of Poverty: Toward a Genealogy
of Liberal Governance (1991); Critical and Effective Histories: Foucault’s
Methods and Historical Sociology (1994), Governmentality: Power and Rule
in Modern Society (2010, 2nd revised edition); and Governing Societies:
Political Perspectives on Domestic and International Rule (2007).
Jacqui Dibden is a senior research fellow with the Monash Regional
Australia Project, School of Geography and Environmental Science,
Monash University, Australia. She has a background in social anthropol-
ogy and community development. She has undertaken research on social
impacts of rural restructuring, sustainability of rural towns, immigrant
settlement in rural areas, governance of natural resources in farming areas
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
and land stewardship. With Chris Cocklin, she edited a book on regional
Australia, titled Sustainability and Change in Rural Australia (Sydney: UNSW
Press, 2005). Her current research interests are in environmental manage-
ment systems, agri-environmental policy and changing land uses.
Anni Dugdale is a senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of
Canberra, Australia. Her research focuses broadly on the sociology of sci-
ence and technology, health policy, reproductive technologies and gen-
der, technology and development.
Melanie Feakins received her DPhil in Geography from Oxford Univers ity
and is currently a visiting assistant professor at UC Berkeley. Her current
research explores offshore outsourcing of software and IT services in Russia,
focusing on the microscale practices that comprise the untold stories of
globalization. Her work has appeared in journals such as Environment and
Planning A and Global Networks. She is currently writing a book about
Offshore Outsourcing from the perspective of ‘Offshore Russia’.
Laurie Grealish is Associate Professor in nursing at the University of
Canberra, Australia. Her current research activities centre on the assess-
ment of nursing competence in clinical contexts, and the development
and monitoring of workplace learning more generally. She has held lead-
ership positions in cancer and palliative care nursing and is currently the
Associate Dean (Education) in the Faculty of Health.
Maki Hatanaka is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department
of Sociology at Sam Houston State University. Her areas of specializa-
tion include development, globalization and food and agriculture. In
particular, her current research projects focus on emerging governance
mechanisms in food and agriculture, i.e., standards, certification and
labelling. Specifically, she is interested in the ways these mechanisms
are developed, as well as their implications for producers in the global
South. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including
Agriculture and Human Values, Food Policy, The Local Environment: The
International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, Sociologia Ruralis and
World Development.
Paul Henman is a senior lecturer in Social Policy at the University of
Queensland, Australia. His main research interest is in the nexus between
social policy, public administration and information technology, where
he is an international expert on the social study of e-government. His
most recent books are Administering Welfare Reform: International Transfor-
mations in Welfare Governance (Policy, 2006; edited with Menno Fenger)
Notes on Contributors ix
and E-Government: Reconfigurations in Public Administration, Policy and
Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Vaughan Higgins is a senior lecturer in Sociology at Monash University,
Australia. With a particular interest in the analytical approaches of
governmentality and actor network theory, Vaughan’s work is ori-
ented towards the study of how programmes, protocols, standards and
related instruments of governing are implemented in practice, and the
various ways in which these mechanisms, and the conduct of those
who are governed, are shaped as a consequence. Recent books include
Rural Governance: International Perspectives (Routledge, 2007, with Lynda
Cheshire and Geoffrey Lawrence); Agricultural Governance: Globaliza-
tion and the New Politics of Regulation (Routledge, 2005, with Geoffrey
Lawrence); and Constructing Reform: Economic Expertise and the Governing
of Agricultural Change in Australia (Nova Science, 2002).
Liisa Kurunmäki is a reader in Accounting, and a Research Associate
of the ESRC Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR) at
the London School of Economics and Political Science. Liisa joined LSE
as a Lecturer in 1999, and holds an MSc and a PhD from the University
of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has authored and co-authored numerous
articles in scholarly publications. Her research focuses primarily on the
consequences of the encounter between accounting, accountants and
non-accountants in the context of the ongoing public sector reforms.
A list of selected publications can be found at http://www2.lse.ac.uk/
accounting/facultyAndStaff/profiles/kurunmaki.aspx.
Wendy Larner is Professor of Human Geography and Sociology at the
University of Bristol. Her research is situated in the interdisciplinary fields
of globalization, governance and gender, and links insights from criti-
cal social theory with a strong commitment to empirical research. She
challenges conventional understandings of globalization as an inevitable
‘new reality’ by showing that it is a contested and contradictory proc-
ess in the making. Relatedly, she has long-standing research interests in
theorizing neoliberalism and ‘post-welfarist’ governance. In addition to
publishing widely across the social sciences, she is editor of Antipode:
A Radical Journal of Geography and associate editor for Social Politics:
International Studies in Gender, State and Society.
Mike Michael is Professor of Sociology of Science and Technology, and
Director of the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process,
at the Sociology Department, Goldsmiths, University of London. His
main areas of research include the relation between everyday life and