| Standards: Recipes for Reality Contributor(s): Busch, Lawrence (Author) |
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ISBN: 0262525054 ISBN-13: 9780262525053 Publisher: MIT Press OUR PRICE: $39.60 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2013 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Science | Philosophy & Social Aspects - Technology & Engineering | Social Aspects |
| Dewey: 389.6 |
| Series: Infrastructures |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6" W x 8.9" (1.20 lbs) 402 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: An investigation into standards, the invisible infrastructures of our technical, moral, social, and physical worlds. Standards are the means by which we construct realities. There are established standards for professional accreditation, the environment, consumer products, animal welfare, the acceptable stress for highway bridges, healthcare, education--for almost everything. We are surrounded by a vast array of standards, many of which we take for granted but each of which has been and continues to be the subject of intense negotiation. In this book, Lawrence Busch investigates standards as "recipes for reality." Standards, he argues, shape not only the physical world around us but also our social lives and even our selves. Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power--that they often serve to empower some and disempower others. He outlines the history of formal standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and things. Busch suggests guidelines for developing fair, equitable, and effective standards. Taking a uniquely integrated and comprehensive view of the subject, Busch shows how standards for people and things are inextricably linked, how standards are always layered (even if often addressed serially), and how standards are simultaneously technical, social, moral, legal, and ontological devices. |
Contributor Bio(s): Busch, Lawrence: - Lawrence Busch is University Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University and the author of Standards: Recipes for Reality (MIT Press)Bowker, Geoffrey C.: - Geoffrey C. Bowker is Professor and Director of the Evoke Lab at the University of California, Irvine. He is the coauthor (with Susan Leigh Star) of Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences and the author of Memory Practices in the Sciences, both published by the MIT Press.Edwards, Paul N.: - Paul N. Edwards is Professor in the School of Information and the Department of History at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (1996) and a coeditor (with Clark Miller) of Changing the Atmosphere: Expert Knowledge and Environmental Governance (2001), both published by the MIT Press. |