Number as Inventive Frontier: Equivalence, Accounting, Calculation

该奖项为将在约翰·霍普金斯大学举行的一个国际研讨会提供部分支持，该研讨会的主题是世界各地数字的作用和观念的变化。越来越多的证据表明，在全球化的世界中，不同地区的社会实践正在打破量化与文化之间的旧区别。对数字的迅速流行和专业的求助并不一定是向标准数学抽象迈出的一步。它可能更像一种方言，具有快速变化的语义、方言和翻译。这个以人类学为基础的社会科学研讨会将首次汇集跨学科的学者，通过实证研究和批判性反思来研究数字。与会者将来自巴西、法国、英国和美国。他们的研究横跨中国、泰国和巴基斯坦。西非和南部非洲、加勒比、也门和西方（包括正式和非正式环境中当前和历史上的数字做法）。为期三天的研讨会形式旨在通过三个不同的主题：等效、会计和计算，对数字现象进行广泛而严格的调查。每个小组成员都被邀请就其中一个主题发表演讲，而报告员的总结和最后的会议则涉及趋同、差距和智力挑战。为了在研讨会之前优化交流，我们将预先分发一份指导文件，并建立一个网站，以便交流、张贴相关资料、提前提交论文和进行讨论。结果将是一份集体编辑的出版物，分析国家和国际生活中有关数字的概念和实践。

This award provides partial support for an international workshop, to be held at Johns Hopkins University, on the changing roles of, and ideas about, numbers around the world. Evidence is mounting that older distinctions between quantification and culture are being breached by social practices in varied locations in the globalized world. The burgeoning popular and professional recourse to numbers is not necessarily a step towards standard mathematical abstraction. It may work more like a vernacular language, with rapidly changing semantics, dialects and translations. This anthropology-based, social science workshop will bring together for the first time an interdisciplinary array of scholars studying number through empirical research and critical reflection. Participants will come from Brazil, France, England and the United States. Their research spans China, Thailand, Pakistan. West and Southern Africa, the Caribbean, Yemen and the West (to include current and historical number practices in formal and informal settings).The three-day workshop format aims for a broad yet rigorous investigation of number phenomena by working on three distinct themes: equivalence, accounting, and calculation. Each panelist has been recruited to present on one of these themes, while rapporteurs' summaries and the final session address convergences, gaps, and intellectual challenges. To optimise interchange in advance of the workshop, a orienting paper will be precirculated and a website set up to allow interchange, posting of relevant sources, submission of papers in advance and ongoing discussion. The outcome will be a collective edited publication that analyzes the concepts and practices surrounding numbers in national and international life..