Commensuration as a Social Process.¶
Espeland, W. N., & Stevens, M. L. (1998). Commensuration as a Social Process. Annual Review of Sociology, 313-343.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Commensurability
- Commensurability is the structural property that enables diverse quantities or values to be expressed in a common unit or metric, allowing them to be compared, ranked, and traded off, a process Espeland and Stevens (1998) characterize as a fundamental social mode of valuation.
This sourceFoundational sociological treatment defining commensuration as the transformation of qualities into quantities sharing a common metric, and analyzing how this translation reorganizes attention, distorts meaning, and concentrates power over what counts.
- Commensurability is the structural property that enables diverse quantities or values to be expressed in a common unit or metric, allowing them to be compared, ranked, and traded off, a process Espeland and Stevens (1998) characterize as a fundamental social mode of valuation.
- Value Commensuration
- When different stakeholders, domains, or ethical frameworks value outcomes incommensurably, commensuration bridges that incommensurability through a constructed metric, an act that Espeland and Stevens (1998) characterize as a fundamentally social process in which translation always entails loss, distortion, or contestation of meaning.
This sourceFoundational sociological treatment defining commensuration as the transformation of qualities into quantities sharing a common metric, and analyzing how this translation reorganizes attention, distorts meaning, and concentrates power over what counts.
- When different stakeholders, domains, or ethical frameworks value outcomes incommensurably, commensuration bridges that incommensurability through a constructed metric, an act that Espeland and Stevens (1998) characterize as a fundamentally social process in which translation always entails loss, distortion, or contestation of meaning.
Mechanisms¶
- Contrast Table
- Its failure modes are all about the frame rather than the cells. Selective columns turn a reference into rhetoric; forced commensurability puts a value in a cell for a dimension the item doesn't really have, manufacturing a comparison that misleads
This sourceExplains how commensuration can manufacture a misleading comparison.
- Its failure modes are all about the frame rather than the cells. Selective columns turn a reference into rhetoric; forced commensurability puts a value in a cell for a dimension the item doesn't really have, manufacturing a comparison that misleads
- Loss and Damage Register
- Its failure mode is commensuration pressure — the quiet gravity that pulls every entry toward a comparable number, so that what cannot be priced is dropped or shadow-priced into distortion.
This sourceDefines commensuration as translating heterogeneous qualities into a common metric and shows that it can exclude hard-to-price values or obscure context through forced quantification.
- Its failure mode is commensuration pressure — the quiet gravity that pulls every entry toward a comparable number, so that what cannot be priced is dropped or shadow-priced into distortion.
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