The Place of Numbers: Histories, Geographies, and Theories of Quantification
The Place of Numbers: Histories, Geographies, and Theories of Quantification
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数字的地位：历史、地理和量化理论
DOI：
10.1068/d1904ed
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发表时间：
2001
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Hannah
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
T. Barnes;M. Hannah
大约三十年前，大卫·哈维（David Harvey, 1973，第128页）宣称人文地理学的定量革命已经结束，认为它“已经走到尽头，边际收益递减正在开始……”。那么为什么会有这个特别的问题，特别是在这个杂志上，它的撰稿人通常既不是因为他们对定量事物的兴趣也不是因为他们的专业知识而闻名？地理已经做到了这一点。但这并不是dëja©似曾相识。我们认为地理学家应该认真对待数字和统计，不是因为它们是“自然自己的语言”，这是它们在数量革命中的理由，而是因为它们是构建社会现实的关键组成部分，自数量革命以来，包括哈维在内的地理学家一直在寻求质疑。具体地说，自从18世纪和19世纪第一次全面的全国人口普查，以及处理人口普查的相关机构（见Desrosie©res， 1998）以来，数字的铭文，以及后来在一套新兴的商业和国家主义网络中，它们与概率计算的结合，产生了一个被组织、控制、操纵、研究和认识的世界。数字被编织进了现代性的结构中。忽略了它们，我们就忽略了我们试图理解的大部分内容。这并不意味着我们需要重新参加本科统计学课程，对于那些有统计学课程的人来说，重新学习格里高利（Gregory）（1963年）（斯坦，这是）、布莱洛克（Blalock）（1960年）和约翰斯顿（Johnston）（1978年）的课程。虽然有可能。最近一些关于数字和统计的最好的批判性作品，如洛琳·达斯顿（1988）、阿兰·德罗西©res（1998）、伊恩·哈金（1990）、唐纳德·麦肯齐（1981）、泰德·波特（1986;1995）和斯蒂芬·斯蒂格勒（1986），都是引人注目的，因为它们认真地研究了这些技术细节。推导回归系数的情况确实很重要（Porter, 1986）。或者在赫特福德郡的罗桑特德实验站进行的精确实验设计，罗纳德·费舍尔在此基础上提出了关于方差分析的论点，这是至关重要的（Desrosie©res, 1998）。更一般地说，这群作家带来的讨论，也是我们认为地理学家应该分享的一种敏感，是对数字的共谋力量的认识。数字创造了嵌入更广泛的社会项目的世界，开启了权威和控制。其后果是深远的。正如波特（1995，第45页）所写：“学校的成绩、分数和标准化考试，以及会计报表上的底线，除非它们的有效性，或者至少是合理性，被那些它们声称要衡量其成就或价值的人所接受，否则就不能有效地发挥作用。”当它存在时，度量通过给被度量的活动指明方向而取得成功。通过这种方式，个人是可治理的。他们展示了福柯所说的治理能力。数字创造并可以与规范进行比较，规范是现代民主国家中最温和、最普遍的权力形式之一。由于这个原因，统计太重要了，不能只留给统计学家。它们是如何建造的，为什么建造，由谁建造，关于谁建造，它们是如何使用的？客座编辑环境与规划D：社会与空间2001，第19卷，379 ^ 383页
Almost thirty years ago David Harvey (1973, page 128) claimed an end to the quantitative revolution in human geography, arguing that it ``has run its course, and diminishing marginal returns are setting in ...''. So why the special issue, and especially in this journal whose contributors are not usually known either for their interest or for their expertise in things quantitative? Geography has been there, and done that. But this is not dëja© vu all over again. We argue that geographers should take numbers and statistics seriously not because they are ``nature's own language', which was their justification in the quantitative revolution, but because they are a crucial component in the construction of social reality, and which ever since postquantitative revolution geographers, including Harvey, have sought to interrogate. Specifically, since the first comprehensive national censuses during the 18th and 19th centuries, and associated institutions for dealing with them (see Desrosie© res, 1998), the inscription of figures, and later their joining to probability calculations within a burgeoning set of both commercial and statist networks, produced worlds to be organised, controlled, manipulated, studied, and known. Numbers are woven into the very fabric of modernity. By disregarding them, we disregard large chunks of what we try to understand. This does not mean we need to re-enrol in undergraduate statistics classes, and for those who have them, dust off their Gregory's (1963) (Stan, this is), Blalock's (1960), and Johnston's (1978). Although it might. Some of the best recent critical work on numbers and statistics by writers like Loraine Daston (1988), Alain Desrosie© res (1998), Ian Hacking (1990), Donald MacKenzie (1981), Ted Porter (1986; 1995), and Stephen Stigler (1986), is compelling because it takes seriously precisely those technical details. The circumstances of the derivation of the regression coefficient really do matter (Porter, 1986). Or the precise experimental designs carried out at the Rothamstead Experimental Station, Hertfordshire, on the basis of which Ronald Fisher made arguments about the analysis of variance, are critically important (Desrosie© res, 1998). More generally, what this group of writers bring to the discussion, and it is a sensibility that we think geographers should share, is the recognition of the complicit power of numbers. Numbers create worlds embedded within wider social projects turning on authority and control. The consequences are profound. As Porter (1995, page 45) writes: `̀Grades in schools, scores and standardized examinations, and the bottom line on an accounting sheet, cannot work effectively unless their validity, or at least reasonableness, is accepted by the people whose accomplishments or worth they purport to measure. When it is, the measures succeed by giving direction to the very activities that are being measured. In this way, individuals are made governable. They display what Foucault calls governmentality. Numbers create and can be compared with norms, which are among the gentlest and most pervasive forms of power in modern democracies.'' For this reason, statistics are much too important to be left only to the statisticians. How and why they are constructed, by whom and about whom, how they are used and Guest editorial Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2001, volume 19, pages 379 ^ 383