Content area
Full Text
Mau Steffen., The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social (Cambridge, UK, Polity, 2019, 200 p.)
Steffen Mau’s The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social offers a masterful overview of the changes wrought by the multiplication of metrics in the contemporary social world. Mau, Professor of Macrosociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin, analyzes what he describes as “the emergence of a society of scores, rankings, likes, stars, and grades” [2]. Drawing on a wide range of cases, from university rankings to credit ratings, credit scoring, peer-to-peer evaluation, and the Quantified Self movement, Mau examines some of the theoretical ramifications of the extraordinary increase in quantitative measurements that is transforming many domains of our lives.
The main argument of the book is that the rise of metrics in different sectors leads to an increase in competition between social actors. According to Mau, metrics function as a “dispositive of comparison that leads directly to competition” [169], both between individuals and between organizations. The argument relies on three building blocks. First, the author maps out the encroachment of metrics on areas of social life that were formerly not quantified, a development he analyzes through a Habermassian lens as a colonization of the lifeworld by the numerical systems. Second, he argues that metrics come with “an expansion, if not a universalization, of competition,” [6] through processes of commensuration, comparison, and rivalry. Last, he connects this expansion of metrics-driven competition with the reinforcement of quantitative inequalities. Mau draws on multiple examples to exemplify how these dynamics tend to play out. He begins with the case of rankings and ratings, which he analyzes as forms of hierarchization, before turning to scoring and screening metrics, which he labels instances of classification. He then discusses the rise of what he calls the “evaluation cult,” based on star- and point-based reviews, and examines the role of self-tracking graphs and charts in the Quantified Self movement.
The book builds on these cases for its theoretical discussion of the social effects of the multiplication of metrics and, through metrics, of status-based competition. First, building on Bourdieu, Mau argues that the development of metrics reinforces the “power of nomination” of incumbents, including states, consultants, and transnational experts. Second, he analyzes some of the...