Governing by Numbers: Why Calculative Practices Matter

Abstract

Sociologists are busy rediscovering the economy (Callon, 1998; Fligstein, 1990; Granovetter, 1985). The roles of networks that connect and form agents figure large in this revival of interest in the market as a social institution (Callon, 1998: 8). Until recently, however, little attention has been devoted in the sociological literature to the calculative practices that make the economy visible and measurable qua economy (Callon, 1998; Hopwood and Miller, 1994; Miller, 1998). In particular, the emergence and roles of the calculative practices of accounting have been overlooked or marginalized in the sociological literature. This paper calls for greater attention to these practices, and argues that it is important to examine their emergence, and the ways in which new calculative practices alter the capacities of agents, organizations, and the connections among them. It also examines how they alter the power relations that they shape and are embedded within, and how particular calculative practices enable new ways of acting upon and influencing the actions of individuals. Calculative practices, in other words, should be analyzed as "technologies of government" (Rose and Miller, 1992: 183) as the mechanisms through which programs of government are articulated and made operable. Rather than focusing on the ways in which the economy is shaped by economics, attention is directed at the ways in which accounting shapes social and economic relations.