ABSTRACT
How does the act of counting affect the world? How does it change the objects counted, change the lives of those who count (double entendre intended)? Some say that only “what’s counted counts” (Waring 1989, Anderson and Fienberg 1999). Others (purportedly Albert Einstein among them) say the opposite: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted” (The Quotations Page). Our argument, briefl y stated, is that society and the statistics that measure and describe it are mutually constructed.1 This argument addresses two counterarguments from seemingly opposite directions. On the one hand, we oppose the notion that statistics are simple, straightforward, objective descriptions of society, gathered from nonparticipant points of observation. We claim, and demonstrate, that in the act of counting we do not stand neutrally outside the “object” we count, but rather (to some extent) enter into it, redefi ne it, change the stakes that affect it, and thus even change the numbers we count to represent it. This is not only because all knowledge is produced from some position or other with a partial and fragmentary view of the world, not only because the so-called “god trick” (Haraway 1991: 191)—the trick of being all-seeing, as from a point both everywhere and nowhere-is a dangerous illusion, but also because the very act of counting is a specifi c form of viewing. Like all other specifi c forms of viewing, it is a social act. Counting acts in and upon the social world. Of course, this also means that not counting has an effect on the aspects of the world we (do and/or don’t) count. What we choose to count, what we choose not to count, who does the counting, and the categories and values we choose to apply when counting are matters that matter (see, e.g., Anderson and Fienberg 1999, Waring 1989). Thus users (producers, readers, interpreters, deployers) of statistics are “users that matter” (Oudshoorn and Pinch 2003).
