Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

SAGETRACK

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Social Studies of Science
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Thévenot, L.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Postscript to the Special Issue: Governing Life by Standards

A View from Engagements

Laurent Thévenot

Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 10 rue Monsieur le Prince, 75006 Paris, France, thevenot{at}ehess.fr

Standardization has been extended far beyond the industrial world. It participates in governing our lives and the lives of all living entities by producing public guarantees in the form of standards. Social studies of medicine have provided a precious contribution to advancing standardization as a topic of inquiry, most notably through investigations of the relationship between ‘regulation’ and ‘objectivity’, drawn together in the concept of the standard. This postscript discusses this contribution from the point of view of ‘regimes of engagement’, that is, a variety of ways in which humans are committed to their environment — from public stances to the closest forms of proximity — and in pursuit of a kind of ‘good’. These regimes are distinguished according to the good they promise, as well as the degree to which the guarantee being offered can be held in common. The discussion in this postscript extends the critique raised by scholarship on standards by taking into account the oppression and subjugation that standardization can engender.

Key Words: conventions • engagement • standards • worth

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 39, No. 5, 793-813 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0306312709338767
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Social Studies of ScienceHome page
A. Cambrosio, P. Keating, T. Schlich, and G. Weisz
Biomedical Conventions and Regulatory Objectivity: A Few Introductory Remarks
Social Studies of Science, October 1, 2009; 39(5): 651 - 664.
[Abstract] [PDF]