A (Budding) Sociologist's Commonplace Book

The Quantification of Everything: NGO Rankings

Dan Hirschman — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:09:03 +0000

Readers of the blog likely know my fascination with quantification in all of its delightful and nefarious forms, including questionable rankings. A fellow UM Sociology student sent me a link to this excellent critique: Lies, damned lies, and ranking lists: The Top 100 Best NGOs. Interestingly, Algoso’s critique is not simply along the lines that the NGO rankings are arbitrary and their methodology a black box (though that is the case), but rather that NGOs, unlike (say) universities, are not sufficiently alike to be ranked at all:

So could we apply that metric/formula approach to NGOs? I don’t think so. As GJ points out, there’s no easy way to compare impacts across social sectors. At least universities are all doing basically the same thing (they educate students, conduct research, run athletic programs, etc.) and are structured in basically the same ways. But Wikimedia Foundation, Ashoka, TED, Search for Common Ground, and MSF? I could not think of a more diverse group of organizations in terms of missions, methods, or structures. How would you ever craft a set of metrics that would apply to all of these, let alone a formula that spits out a number to fairly rank them?

The problem is not simply that these particular rankings suck, but that the category “NGO” covers too heterogeneous a collection of objects to be worth ranking in the first place. Of course, as we know from the various branches of institutional theory, external forces like rankings often produce conformity when it is lacking to begin with. Whether or not NGOs will become more commensurable (is there an analog to earnings per share or return on equity?) remains to be seen, but it’s not impossible. For the moment though, rather than use the rankings to increase conformity, Algoso argues for dequantification – getting rid of the rankings entirely – on the grounds that this category is not sufficiently uniform to be worth ranking at all.*

If any other readers come across interesting examples of unusual or contested quantifications, please send them my way!

* This strategy is somewhat similar to the one my co-authors (Ellen Berrey and Fiona Rose Greenland) and I have written about in a new project on the dequantification of affirmative action at the University of Michigan. There, “race” was the contested, unsettled category whose lack of homogeneity imperiled a quantified system of admissions. Paper to be presented (hopefully) at ASA this year.

Recipe for a Good Single Case Theoretical Paper

Dan Hirschman — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:51:14 +0000

There are several different kinds of “standard” soc journal articles. There are big N regressions on established survey data, there are pure theory articles, there are small N comparisons, and there are “medium N” qualitative interview-based papers, and so on. One of the genres I often find myself writing – and reading – are single case (often historical) papers that aim to make broad theoretical claims. When these papers work, I think they make four interrelated claims. These claims also apply to other sorts of papers, but perhaps in different amounts. So, without further ado, here’s my four-part recipe for a good single case theoretical paper:

1. Theoretical puzzle: What literature are you identifying a problem in (and thus trying to contribute to)? What’s the problem?

2. Theoretical solution: What new idea or other existing literature are you drawing on to solve the theoretical puzzle?

3. Empirical puzzle: What empirical case can help us resolve the theoretical problem (by showing off the theoretical puzzle in a particular site)?

4. Empirical operationalization: How does the theoretical solution solve the empirical puzzle in this case?

These four ingredients draw heavily from Abbott’s classic chapter on “Puzzles,” as well as Murray Davis’s excellent article, “That’s interesting!” I think they capture what makes for a really compelling single case story, especially when authors try to use cases that are somewhat obscure, or just not immediately exciting to most sociologists. In order to sell the case, the author has to use it as an empirical puzzle that illuminates a theoretical puzzle we already care about. What do you think?

Law and the Performativity of Economics: “Fraud-on-the-Market” Claims and the EMH

Dan Hirschman — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:05:15 +0000

The performativity of economics has taken on a lot of meanings in the past 15 years, but all of them revolve around the ways that economic theories alter the objects about which they are theorizing. Some versions – MacKenzie’s story of Black-Scholes-Merton – focus on the self-fulfilling character of economic theories, where the theory is mobilized by interested actors to legitimate the market and then used to price the options bought and sold on the market and thus the prices converge to the theory’s expectations. Other versions focus on how economic theories call new objects into being – my own work, for example, looks at how macroeconomic statistics and theories change how we think about “the economy” as a whole. Often, these arguments are a bit messy, as it can be difficult to show the consequences of a particular theory (in the absence of the neat tests performed by economists themselves on specific predictions, as in MacKenzie’s work). Court cases and regulations present interesting opportunities for studying the performativity of economics that I think are so far underexploited. Let me offer one interesting example suggested by a friend working as a research attorney.*

The Securities and Exchange Commission regulates securities transactions and, in particular, investigates and punishes fraud and deceit related to securities. SEC Rule 10b-5 prohibits fraud, specifically stating:

It shall be unlawful for any person, directly or indirectly, by the use of any means or instrumentality of interstate commerce, or of the mails or of any facility of any national securities exchange,
(a) To employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud,
(b) To make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading, or
(c) To engage in any act, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person,
in connection with the purchase or sale of any security.

Rule 10b-5 and its interpretation and implementation establish the elements needed to prosecute someone for committing fraud. One of those elements is that the defrauded party needs to have relied on the false information provided by the offender. In other words, if I lie to you and swear that Apple shares are going to tank tomorrow (because of some information that I know will be released, say), and you sell a block of shares, you still have to show that the false information about Apple that I provided led you to sell the shares (and that, for example, you were not already planning on selling them as part of a longer-term strategy laid out weeks in advance). This is known as “reliance.”

Ok, that’s all well and good, but what does this have to do with the performativity of economics? Well, in the 1960s, economist began writing about something called the efficient markets hypothesis (or EMH, see Quiggin 2010 for an excellent critical summary). The EMH argues, in one formulation, that well-functioning financial markets capture all public information about a traded security. In other words, the price of a stock on a prominent stock exchange already reflects all of the publicly available information released about the company. This theory came to prominence in the 1960s, and has been debated ever since, but still holds a lot of sway among financial economist (especially the ~~“weak”~~“semi-strong” form, more or less what I described).**

In 1988, the efficient markets theory produced a new kind of claim: “fraud-on-the-market.” In Basic Inc. v. Levinson, the Supreme Court ruled that because the NYSE was an efficient market, fraudulent statements made by a company to the public would be reflected in the company’s stock price. Any investor who made decisions based on the company’s stock price – that is to say, all of them! – would then be able to satisfy the “reliance” component of a fraud case. By releasing false information publicly into an efficient market, the company committed a “fraud-on-the-market.” I haven’t read the case itself, but here’s the wikipedia summary of the holding related to this new claim:

Observing that the reality of modern securities markets is such that face-to-face transactions are rare, Justice Blackmun noted that requiring a showing of actual reliance would effectively prevent plaintiffs from ever proceeding as a class action. Also finding that investors often rely on market price, he found the rebuttable presumption of reliance (through the fraud-on-the-market theory) to be a reasonable compromise between the requirements of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 23 and the securities fraud element of reliance. Blackmun further noted that both Congress’ intent and recent empirical studies reflect the idea that open markets incorporate all material information into share price.

I’m not sure this case merits a full paper, but I think it would fit nicely into a larger argument about law and the performativity of economics, or the history of the efficient markets hypothesis and its real world effects. Here we can see how a new kind of claim – “fraud-on-the-market” – was made possible by a new theory of what financial markets do – capture all publicly available information and summarize it into the price of a security. And the whole story is political down to its very core, involving regulators, legislation, courts, and business interests vying on each side for money and power. This is not a story of a theory having some autonomous power to determine the fate of the economy, but rather a story about the subtle interactions between politics and technopolitics, or between theories of the world and disputes over how the world should be run.

*I thank Max Milstein for pointing out this example. Note that I am not a lawyer, nothing in this post should be taken as the opinion of a lawyer, yadda yadda.
**Corrected to reflect John Quiggin’s comment below.

Are There (Many) Non-White Republican Primary Voters?

Dan Hirschman — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:55:11 +0000

So, the Republican primaries are in full swing now, and may be close to settling on Romney as the big winner. The first two states to vote, as always, were Iowa and New Hampshire. One of the most common arguments made against IA and NH going first is that both states are overwhelmingly White, and thus not representative of the broader public.

I understand this argument for the Democratic primary, but I wonder, does it actually matter in the Republican primary? By that I mean, are there any other states in which Republican primary voters show substantial racial diversity? So far, my quick searches have been completely unable to find information on Republican primary voters by race. Does anyone know where to find this information, or even if any of the pollsters track it? My guess is that in all 50 states, Republican primary voters are overwhelmingly white, though one or two states may have a sizable Republican Latino minority (and perhaps Hawaii has a sizable Asian minority?).

If it’s true that Republican primary voters are overwhelmingly white across the country, it undercuts one of the strongest arguments against IA and NH. That’s not to say that they should be first, but just that one of the ways in which they are most unrepresentative of the country as a whole may not actually be unrepresentative of the Republican base.

Corporations Should (and Do) Serve the Public

Dan Hirschman — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:03:00 +0000

A quick complaint. We often talk about non-profit and for-profit corporations as if they were radically different kinds of things. In some ways, that makes sense, because they do usually run according to different funding models, have somewhat different obligations, etc. But in another, very particular but deeply normative way it doesn’t make sense. Specifically, we often argue something of the form, “non-profits exist to serve the public, for-profits exist for private gain.” Corporations are not natural kinds, they are technical-legal assemblages people, tools and rights, sanctified by states. In the 16th-18th century, corporations in England were specifically chartered by the monarch with particular tasks (like opening up and maintaining trade with India). Until the late 19th century, corporations in the US could not receive general purpose, unlimited-life charters, but rather were chartered for specific tasks considered to be in the public interest (at least avowedly), like constructing a specific railway. In exchange for these socially useful undertakings, corporations were granted legal privileges, especially limited liability (i.e. the corporation was liable for damages and debts, not the directors and owners individually). Investors and entrepreneurs were certainly out for private gains, but they accessed the corporate form because they were allowed to do so because, at least in theory, there was some sort of public gain.

At least since Milton Friedman’s famous essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”, popular discourse has largely accepted the idea that the best way business can serve the public is by making money the best it can (see also the rise of the concept of “shareholder value”), although the large and growing corporate social responsibility movement disagrees at least in part with this understanding. But that’s still a debate about the best way for corporations to serve the public.

To summarize: Corporations are a privilege granted by the state, not a natural right, and thus should always (in a normative sense) produce a net good for the public.*

*Note I am ignoring some really tricky problems surrounding transnational corporations in part because my knowledge of how incorporation works for such companies is much sketchier, and because the notion of a “public” gets fuzzier once it’s no longer coterminous with the population governed state.

Time Zones, Before and After

Dan Hirschman — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 02:25:17 +0000

Today I had the pleasure of attending a talk by historian of physics and eminent STS scholar Peter Galison, based on his book Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps. The talk connected Einstein and Poincare’s theoretical work to the very material problems of the standardization of time and distance. One of Galison’s slide included a map that I managed to find through some quick Google image searching and which struck me as a lovely snapshot of what was at stake in the creation of time-zones in the late 19th century by railroad executives. Apparently, when the rail tycoons met to decide the final lines, they used a “one mile, one vote” system, where each mile of track gave the tycoon one vote. I guess that’s democracy, of a very capitalist sort!

Anyway, here’s the lovely map showing the various local times and the eventually imposed system of four time zones in the US (from here).

ASA Page Limits: What Jeremy Said!

Dan Hirschman — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:12:18 +0000

Jeremy Freese has a post up at ScatterPlot about an issue on a lot of people’s minds right now: do you actually have to obey the 20 page limit for ASA submissions? My short answer is: No. Here’s Jeremy’s more elaborated version:

I have never in my life paid any attention to this rule. I didn’t even know it existed until I was well into assistant professorhood, and only awhile after that did I come to appreciate the other people attend to it. Seems crazy to me to go to any amount of extra work for the benefit of one person who probably won’t read the whole thing anyway. But I’ve known people who have spent days of their life making careful abridgments to reach exactly 20 pages. So, I have a view for myself, which is basically “Eh, I’m not doing that and it’s perfectly okay if somebody doesn’t accept my paper as a result; it’s not like whether or not I get to present at ASA will make any tangible difference whatsoever in my life at this point.” Yet, I recognize, that this is a fine answer for myself does not mean that it is the right answer to give to students or other folks who ask what they should do. So I’m never sure what to say. Any thoughts?

I would be really interested to hear someone defend the 20p rule, or to hear stories of anyone who has been negatively affected by violating it. So far, I’ve submitted several papers in the high 30s. This year, I submitted a whopper – something on the order of 16,000 words, a full, lengthy article draft. Even though my career is nowhere near as secure as Jeremy’s – and by that, I mean I will be on the job market in about two years, please let it improve by then – I still feel that the time spent cutting down a paper is not well-spent, and that if the person skimming the paper to determine its inclusion in a panel likes it from the first few pages they will probably include it, whether or not there are 15 pages or 40 following it. I guess one legitimate concern would be the session organizer worrying that a lengthy paper will not be sufficiently cut down for the presentation version. But given the 7 month gap between submission and presentation, I imagine most short ASA submissions are much longer papers by the time the presentation comes along anyway.

Thoughts? Leave your comments over at ScatterPlot!

The Quantification of Everything: Weighing Faith

Dan Hirschman — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:18:43 +0000

I wasn’t familiar with the website/magazine freq.uenci.es (“a collaborative genealogy of spirituality”) until a friend linked to a fascinating article by Lynne Gerber on the Christian weight-loss program First Place. The article documents the ritual weigh-ins that begin meetings of the groups, and how members make sense of their results:

When being weighed, the member steps on the scale and recites the week’s scripture memory verse, one of nine commitments participants make for the duration of the thirteen-week program. The leader writes down the member’s weight in her book—it is almost always a her—along with the member’s success at recalling the verse. The fusion between religiosity and weight loss that marks First Place is exemplified in that moment where the member is held accountable to two sacred symbols of God’s power and will: scripture and the scale.

The article goes into some detail about how members make sense of their successes and failures at meeting the various commitments – both spiritual and physical – required by the program. The end is particularly punchy, and connects the scale and faith again:

The question Christian weight loss programs often poses for scholars of both religion and of dieting culture is similar to the ambiguity in First Place’s purpose: is Christian weight loss essentially a secular venture, luring believers into its programs by adding a spiritual varnish to a worldly practice, or is it merely explicating, marking or making clear the religious concerns that are at the heart of weight loss projects both sacred and secular. … First Place members don’t really care. They are much more taken with tension that mounts as the weigh-in progresses and their faithfulness is about to be measured by number. By collectively divining the scale in the wake of that judgment, the tension between godly ideals and bodily realities are eased and the program maintains its plausibility for another week. [Emphasis Added]

Highly recommended for a quick and interesting Monday afternoon read.

Google Scholar Scraper?

Dan Hirschman — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 16:43:42 +0000

Dear Readers,

Does anyone have a good scraper for Google Scholar that they would be willing to share (or point me to)? I’m looking for something simple – input a search string (including a “cited by” search) and capture basic metadata (author, title, publication, year) of the results.

Thanks!
Dan

No Friday in Samoa This Week, or, The Social Construction of Time Redux

Dan Hirschman — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 20:55:06 +0000

Slow posting here over the holidays, but I had to mention this fantastic story. Dedicated readers may remember my love of the social construction of time as an example for teaching social construction: powerful, important, political in a broad sense, but not as hot button and identity-challenging as race, gender or class, I think time makes an excellent introduction to thinking about the historical, political, cultural, etc. construction of reality.*

In the most recent example of the continuing work to make time real, Samoa will not have a Friday this week. Here’s NPR:

People in Samoa (population 193,000) want to be closer time-wise to Australia, New Zealand, China and Tonga because they do so much more day-to-day business with those relatively nearby nations than with the rest of the world. And the problem until now, for example, has been that when it’s 8 a.m. Monday in Samoa it’s 8 a.m. Tuesday in Tonga. Business people in Samoa have kind of been losing a working day when it comes to dealing with their nearest neighbors.

NPR also notes the historical importance of the dateline, and how the move reflects changing patterns of trade:

Samoa has been on the eastern side of the dateline since 1892, The Australian notes, “following lobbying by merchants who did most of their business with America and Europe. … The world has changed. Australia and New Zealand provide half the country’s imports and buy 85 per cent of Samoa’s exports.”

So, in addition to fights over daylight savings time in the 20th century, and over the standardization of time zones for railroads in the 19th, let’s add the international date line as an interesting site where time must be constructed.

And, for a funny take on the dateline problem, see this West Wing clip (of many others).

*Which, as a reminder, is the story of how things become real not why they aren’t real.