DIDIER, Emmanuel; BRUNO, Isabelle. Statism as a militant use of quantification.md

82 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

http://doi.org/10.1590/15174522-105471

DOSSIER82

• Ecole Normale Supérieure-EHESS, Paris, France.

ÿ A preliminary version of this text was published as an introduction to the book Statactivisme (Bruno; Didier; Prévieux, 2014). **University of Lille, Lille, France.

ÿ Translation into Portuguese by Liana Fernandes.

Emmanuel Didier* Isabelle Bruno**

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

“Statativism” as a militant use of

quantification

Resume

Le «statactivisme» comme usage militant de la quantificationÿ

Summary

Mots clefs: statactivisme, sociologie de la quantification, émancipation, institutions, realité.

Quatre types de statactivisme sont presentés : monitor les contradictions internales des institutions, prendre des libertés avec les règles, identify des groupes sociaux en struggle, et proposer des indicateurs alternatifs.

This article presents stativism. It is both a concept that describes a set of statistical practices aimed at emancipation, and a slogan that calls on social actors to use the power of quantification in their struggles, instead of rejecting it and surrendering it. it to powerful institutions. Four forms of stativism are presented: showing the internal contradictions of institutions, making rules more flexible, identifying social groups in struggle and proposing alternative indicators.ÿ

Cet article présente le statactivisme. Il s'agit à la fois d'un concept décrivant un ensemble de practices statistics qui visent à l'émancipation et d'un mot d'ordre enjoignant les acteurs sociaux à s'emparer de la force de la quantification dans leurs luttes sociales plutôt que de la refuser en la laissant aux institutions puissantes.

Keywords: stativism, sociology of quantification, emancipation, institutions, reality.

Machine Translated by Google There of seems disarming to be no any better criticism example than today a number of an authority or a network capable of

The effective instrumentalization of the neoliberal state is unique

(Desrosières, 2008). Its hard core consists of a permanent quantitative and comparative assessment of the activity of agents, thus placed in competition through a technology that can be called benchmarking (Bruno; Didier, 2013). Assessment today is so systematic that it tends to be confused with the action itself. Now, “since the quantification procedures

of numbers. Quantification often plays a prominent role in the production of the “authority of facts”, which has been at the heart of the difficulties encountered by the Frankfurt School in its effort to construct a theory of emancipation (Genel, 2013; Bruno, 2015).

Despite the inaccuracies that the term raises, one can agree to call

the current state of reality neoliberal. This, to a large extent, is shaped and consolidated by statistics, which in itself should not be surprising.

As can be seen from the etymology of the word, statistics has been linked, since its origins, to power, in particular to the power of the State (Bourdieu, 2012), however, neither of the two has remained immutable.

We believe that, for critical thinking, one of the ways of confronting the authority of facts is found, then, in the distinction, proposed by Luc Boltanski in De la Critique, between, on the one hand, “reality” which

“tends to confuse oneself with what seems to be sustained in some way only by its strength, that is, by order”, and on the other, “the world” as “everything that happens”, the set of “events or experiences whose possibility is not inserted in the design of reality” (Boltanski, 2009, p.

93-94). The first is organized based on “formats, determined under the coercion of an institutional power”, which tend to “address the world in

its entirety” (Boltanski, 2009, p. 140). The second, “immersed in the flow of life”, consists of experiences that are difficult to “express in words” (Boltanski, 2009, p. 94). This opposition seems to us to be very useful for understanding the effects of domination and also the critical force attributed to statistics.

“statativism” “statativism” as a militant militant use of quantification quantification 83

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

Machine Translated by Google (Champy, 2009). However, other authors generalized this complaint

they are codified and routinized, their products are reified. They tend to become 'reality', through an irreversible ratchet effect” (Desrosières,

2008, p. 12). We are then obliged to achieve quantified goals and

indefinitely intensify our performance according to the values defined

by the indicator. The practice refers to a baseline of optimal reproduction

of the same, despite variations, experiments, accidents and unforeseen

events. The insertion of actors into increasingly closed quantification

networks therefore seems to be one of the main instruments for

narrowing the practical possibilities offered to them.

With the development of benchmarking, statistics became the

target of much criticism and, ultimately, rejection on principle. The first

to lose with these new neoliberal assessment methods, among which

we can mention health, social service, education, justice, information

and culture professionals , who came together in the Appel des appels1

movement (Gori et al., 2009), They immediately felt the harmful effects

of performance management techniques , which consist of quantifying

and comparing the results obtained in the exercise of their professions.

These professionals denounced such techniques due to the

impenetrability of quantifying what sociologist Florent Champy calls

“prudential practices”, that is , attention to particular cases, complex and specific situations.

for any quantification, whatever it may be, drawing especially on

arguments from different currents of Lacanian psychoanalysis (ECF,

2008; Milner, 2011) or the paradigm of the gift (Caillé, 2012). This

happened in such a way that statistics that have a very distant

relationship with benchmarking and that, until then, enjoyed a very

progressive image, became targets of criticism.

1 NT: Appel des appels is a movement created in 2008 by psychoanalyst Roland Gori and supported by civil society that aims to unite professionals from different sectors of the public service in opposition to carrying out reforms and evaluating public action based mainly on economic criteria. More information at http://www.appeldesappels.org/.

84 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

Machine Translated by Google Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

2 On May 15, 2012, a conference on “stativism” was organized in Paris, which gave rise to the work Statactivisme : comment lutter avec des nombres (Bruno; Didier; Prévieux, 2014).

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 85

It was then possible to show the importance of stativism in the fight against

the abuse of power by the police in France (Didier, 2018) or, even,

Afterwards, a special edition in English of the Italian magazine

Partecipazione e conflict made it more widely accessible (Bruno; Didier; Vitale, 2014).

This neologism must, therefore, be understood both as a slogan to

be brandished in struggles and as a descriptive concept, used to qualify

experiments aimed at reappropriating the emancipatory power of statistics.

Since 2012,2 successive works carried out by groups of researchers, as

well as activists and artists, have made it possible, on the one hand, to

map a set of practices related to this aspiration and, on the other, to

explain the tensions and issues in which this use of quantification plunged

us. These efforts resulted in many publications that nurtured and

exemplified the concept of stativism. First, a book enabled its wide

dissemination in France (Bruno; Didier; Prévieux, 2014).

However, if today statistics are readily criticized for their collusion

with power and sanction, the history of their links with social reform and

emancipation is equally long and rich. Statistics also showed, in the past,

that another reality was possible or made other possibilities real. That's

why we don't react like those who totally reject them and shout “No to how

much phrenia! No to numbers! Yes to the qualities!”, because, in doing so,

they leave the monopoly of these instruments to the powerful. Well, there

is no reason why quantification should always be on the side of the State

and capital. It is important to move away from this state-centric view, which

is particularly dominant in France (Didier, 2021), and to highlight other

modes of production and other uses of numbers. To explore the field of

these militant practices, using statistics as a resource of resistance, we

coined a term to name the thing: “stativism”.

Machine Translated by Google they aim to emancipate themselves from the government methods typical of that model.

Stativism has a broader and a restricted meaning. Firstly , it designates all

statistical practices that serve to criticize and emancipate oneself from an authority,

whatever it may be. These statistical practices have been around for a long time – we

will return to them. In a second, more restricted sense, some of these practices are

more specifically adapted to the type of power exercised within the scope of neoliberal

governmentality;

In other words, let us remember Desrosières' (2003) argument, according to which we

can list five different forms of State, all of which use statistical tools to act, but each

according to a specific modality. For example, the Keynesian State resorts to national

accounting, as it allows it to control the flows useful for the consumption stimulus policy,

while the neoliberal State prefers to mobilize performance indicators and quantified

targets to evaluate the efficiency of its services. There is a correspondence between

the form of action

Finally, the concept has been used on numerous occasions to analyze the

COVID-19 pandemic, which is also, without a doubt, a pandemic of numbers. For

example, the indicators used by public authorities, such as the number of infections or

deaths, could be questioned, as they would focus attention on medical problems,

diverting it from the socioeconomic consequences of implemented policies, which, in

turn, would be little statistically represented (Didier, 2020). On the other hand, the

ethical tensions associated with quantitative epidemiological models were highlighted

in an article published in Nature that invites, under the banner of statism, statisticians

and modelers to act in a more “transparent and unpretentious” way , to disclose

information such as the limitations of their data, and also to admit that scientific work is

not apart from the social world, its contingencies and uncertainties, its conflicts and

power relations (Saltelli et al. 2020).

in Brazil, as shown in the special issue of the journal Statistique et société (v. 7, n. 1,

2019), which focused on activist quantification in the country.

86 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

Machine Translated by Google If stativism consists of putting statistics at the service of

emancipation, we can distinguish four different ways of proceeding.

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 87

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

The first indicates paths for the study of stativism in a broad sense; it

allows, through a historical review, to question the degree of radicality

of statistical criticism. Next, we will analyze more contemporary practices

of stativism; they may be more or less specific to neoliberal government,

as past forms of authority survive the emergence of new ones, and so

do critical forms . The second part shows how to circumvent – individually

and often secretly – the rules of accountability in order to appropriate

the results of the exercise. The third mobilizes statistics to consolidate

collective categories that provide bases for claiming rights and defending

To face this governmentality that infiltrates a large number of

normally compartmentalized worlds, stativism allows us to go beyond

established borders. The May 2012 colloquium brought together

researchers specialized in the study of statistics, activists accustomed

to using numbers to advance their causes and, finally, visual artists

whose inspiration lies in quantification and contemporary management

techniques using numbers. We thus show that academic criticism, social

criticism and artistic criticism converge.

interests. Finally, the fourth produces alternative indicators to redefine

the meaning of our actions.

In this context, stativism takes on a particular meaning when it

designates methods specifically linked to neoliberal government.

public policy and the statistical tool (Desrosières, 2003). But this adequacy also applies to criticism tools, even when they are quantitative. Each form of authority has its own form of opposition.

Machine Translated by Google 4 NT: In French, “Professions et categories socioprofessionnelles”.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

by Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, in which the authors showed that, in

France, school did not mitigate cultural inequalities among children ; on the contrary,

it aggravated them by recognizing and validating the cultural capital of those who

received it from their families. This was demonstrated by crossing variables, in

particular the father's Occupation Classification4 with different measures of student

life and academic success, in order to show that they are the children of parents

belonging to social categories who already have significant cultural capital that

manage to enter the most prestigious academic careers. In this way, this work

demonstrated what everyone, to some extent, already knew from experience. But it

totaled a series of individual experiences that were statistically objective, thus giving

each person a basis for understanding how this experience was the result, less of

their personal academic virtue, and more of a system of domination imposed on

everyone. Hence a guilt-removal effect.

Let's go back to the past to better follow the trajectory of statistical innovations in this

sense and, thus, better understand how, over time, they were accepted by the public.

It is interesting to highlight here that the classifications used and crossed were

official, that is, they were based on a reality consolidated by state institutions.

Coming from the “system” itself, they show its internal contradictions. The public

service of national education intends to remedy the injustices, appealing to the ethics

of the gift of teachers, who supposedly offer their knowledge for the general interest,

but, in fact, only restore and perpetuate the injustice.

The history of the connection between statistics and social emancipation is old.

An interesting example is offered by the book Les Héritiers (1964),3

88 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

3 NT: Published in Portuguese as The heirs: students and culture. Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC, 2013.

Radical or reformist criticism, examples drawn from the past

Machine Translated by Google The long controversy over the price index in France is another

historical example of the critical reach of statistics (Desrosières, 2014;

Touchelay, 2014). Historians show the trajectory of alternative price

indices from the beginning of the 1970s until the 1990s. During this period,

the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) published the results of an

index of its own elaboration, different from that presented by the National

Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). The CGT's argument

was that the INSEE index was based on premises that were very much in

line with the mode of consumption of the middle classes, very different from that of the working classes.

Initially, the CGT index was very successful and was used – along

with the INSEE index – in salary negotiations. Even the media sometimes took into account its variations (Piriou, 1992). However, from the end of

the 1980s, it began to fall into disuse, until the CGT decided to completely

stop its development during the 1990s. How could this index be accepted

at first, until it gradually lost its appeal and , finally disappear altogether?

Desrosières (2014) offers a sociological explanation: he considers that

does not allow us to capture what this author calls existential criticism. These radical criticisms, which generally come from artists, consist of extracting important elements from the world, even if these have not been institutionalized in one way or another

(Boltanski, 2014). Les Héritiers was not intended to prompt questions about the very existence of the school. In line with the Marxistinspired dichotomy between reformism and revolutionary radicalism that occurred at the time, the book proposed, above all, a reformist critique constructed from categories of institutional reality. The work criticized the institution based on this. Anyway , the publication of this book was a great success. According to Boltanski, the work even “played a significant role in the change of collective spirit that preceded May 1968”.

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 89

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

It can therefore be concluded, according to Luc Boltanski, that statistical criticism

Machine Translated by Google Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

90 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

5 Haacke also later published a book of dialogues with Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu; Haacke, 1994).

On the opening day, the public found only one table, on which there were

questionnaires with about twenty questions on sociodemographic

characteristics and opinions on current events. A few days later, Haacke

added the results of his research to the installation in the form of boxes

representing graphs and histograms. These showed that the vast majority

of visitors had professional connections with the art world, belonged to an

educated middle class, with limited financial resources and who,

predominantly, declared themselves “liberal”, in the American sense of the

term. Haacke thus provided a contrast to another exhibition he was holding

in New York at the same time, where he displayed, without comment, the

many and opulent affiliations of the Guggenheim Museum trustees to the

boards of directors of large capitalist corporations . Thus, within the

institutional frameworks of the art world – prestigious New York galleries

and a museum – and through very consolidated categories, Haacke

exposed the political-social division that radically separated the public of

contemporary art and the elite that sponsors it. The statistical critique was

once again quite reformist, insofar as it relied on the institutions it intended

to undermine.

In the year that the CGT launched its index, the German artist Hans

Haacke set up an exhibition at the New York gallery John Weber with

similar objectives, one might say, to those of the aforementioned book The Heirs. 5

In any case, the fact is that the developers of these indices agreed on

the methodological apparatus that allowed them to be calculated and on

their institutional uses. Even though it has modified the products considered

in the consumer's “basket”, the CGT has appropriated the architecture of

the economic concepts that make such an index relevant. In this sense, the critique was again reformist, not radical.

Statistical arguments meet reception conditions that are more or less

favorable to them and that can change over time.

Machine Translated by Google Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

Based on established and institutionalized elements of reality–

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 91

Bourdieu was part of the long sociological tradition of using statistics,

which can be traced back to Durkheim's Suicide . Furthermore, he had

personal ties with statisticians at the National Institute of Statistics and

Economic Studies (INSEE) since the 1950s and even taught at the

National School of Statistics and Economic Administration (ENSAE) – which trains the Institute's administrators – in the same year. of the

release of Les héritiers. Likewise, the CGT continued a long tradition

of producing social statistics that dates back, through trade unions, to

the end of the 19th century (Topalov, 1994). As for Hans Haacke, if he

apparently produced his questionnaires alone, he was also, in some

way, assisted sociologically by Howard Becker. Representatives of

this generation of stativists therefore used the rich intellectual and

institutional resources to which they had access to produce statistics.

ratings, product series, distribution network and dissemination of a medium, etc. –, these statistics do not radically question this reality

that, at the same time, they denounce; rather, they make it possible to

influence it, to reform it. Bourdieu and Passeron did not question the

school's existence, but they made reform possible; the CGT built a

tool that allowed it to exert more influence, but within the established

framework of salary negotiations; Finally, Haacke helped to found a

new movement called “Institutional Criticism”, which gained ground in the existing artistic milieu. Access to institutional statistical resources

therefore had the joint effect of enabling reform and stabilizing the

framework within which these reforms found their place. Statativism

was, to use the title of Haacke's catalogue, Framing and being framed

(1975), that is, accepting to place oneself within a pre-established framework, which in itself

These three experiences, very much in line with the spirit of the

1970s, have authors who, even though not all of them were specialists

in statistics, were far from being at a disadvantage in relation to them.

Machine Translated by Google In many industries, and more and more often, each person must keep a quantified report of his own activities, which is used regularly for his self-assessment against other people or teams against pre-established quantified objectives.

Operations: circumvent the rule

The scale of application of institutional statistics has changed a lot

since the 1970s. Before, they were applied to large institutions, large

aggregates – for example, the school system, salary negotiations by sector, the world of art –, and stativism developed on this scale. Today,

in institutions, they are also used to evaluate individual agents.

Let's now skip the forty years that separate us from those times

In this way, a stativist practice, today very widespread, albeit quite

discreetly, for actors located at the bottom of the hierarchy, consists of

leaving room for maneuver within the scope of the statistical reports that

are imposed on them. This way of resisting evaluation consists of

behaving exactly like the managers, that is, not really trusting the letter of

the rule, in order to adapt it in a sense that is more suitable to what it

applies to . But the main difference between the top and the bottom of

the hierarchy is that, at the bottom, these readjustments are kept secret,

or, more accurately, they are carried out discreetly because they are

considered illegitimate, while at the top they can be proclaimed to be

nothing more than than salutary adaptations of the rule, demonstrations

of complacency and flexibility (Boltanski, 2009). Stativist emancipation,

in this case, consists, for the dominated, on the one hand, in a free

interpretation of the rule and, on the other, in making public and legitimate a current practice, but kept hidden.

heroics and explore the current descent of this use of statistics.

92 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

it is not radical, but, at the same time, it finds sufficient margins of freedom to modify it, being, therefore, reforming.

Machine Translated by Google Latin – Mexico City, Caracas in Venezuela, Santiago de Chile, etc.

Citystat system appears in the famous television series The Wire.

New York City, during the first term of Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani,

between 1994 and 2001. His police chief, William Bratton, at the time

installed a police management system called Compstat (which, for some,

means “computer statistics” . ” [computational statistics] and, for others,

“comparative statistics” [comparative statistics]), which is fundamentally

based on quantifying the activity of agents. Delegates from each district

were responsible for quantifying their activities, in order to present very

regular reports to the highest police hierarchy, which would allow them to

prove that they took initiatives and were particularly “proactive”. As soon as

this instrument was implemented, the number of registered crimes fell

drastically. Some disputed the cause and effect relationship between the

two things, saying that there was only concomitance, but others – such as

the respected police sociologist Eli Silverman, who published an in-depth

study on Compstat (Silverman, 1999) – spoke of a “miracle of New York". In

any case, many police forces have imitated this system, in the United States

and around the world, particularly in America.

related to Compstat. Even Silverman questions its recent effects on agents very vigorously. The system would no longer encourage them to fight crime better, but, on the contrary, would be encouraging

them to break their own rules. To show the systemic bias of Compstat, Silverman and a former police officer, John Eterno, developed and conducted a statistical survey (Eterno; Silverman, 2012). the union

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 93

To illustrate this point, we chose the case of the police, which is

interesting because its function is precisely to enforce the rules of social life.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

A few years ago, however, there was a spectacular shift in opinions

During the 2000s, the police were subjected to what their detractors pejoratively call the “politics of numbers” and their sycophants the “culture of results”. It is customary to place the birth of this system in the

(Mitchell; Beckett, 2008). This was particularly the case in Baltimore, whose

Machine Translated by Google This research has the virtue of showing – statistically, what is most

important – that agents reappropriated Compstat rules in the way that suited

them, but without expressly violating the rules. However, when asking the

question in terms of transgression of ethics, there is the inconvenience of

issuing a negative moral judgment about an activity that, seen in another way,

is nothing more than a defense (Didier, 2018).

of retired police officers gave them access to the files of its members. The

latter were given an anonymous questionnaire asking whether they felt they

had transformed the numbers or their own behavior under the influence of the

numbers, in an unethical way, and whether they could attribute these behaviors

to the establishment of Compstat. Among those interviewed, more than half

responded that, since Compstat, their behaviors have actually deviated greatly

from the norm, and a further quarter responded that they have deviated

significantly.

Paris Anti-Crime Brigade, through a friendly network, proposed that they

participate in a statistical design workshop based on crime data observed in

their districts. Officials used the complaints received at their stations of a

series of infractions (theft, burglary, etc.). Prévieux then explained to them

how to transform this data into a Voronoï diagram, a graphical representation

similar to meteorological isobaric curves, which shows the volume of crimes

through a greater density of traces. The police exercised their aesthetic sense

by creating splendid drawings, on weekends, in their leisure time (and,

perhaps, even during working hours, but no one can attest to that). The results

were presented on several occasions at renowned exhibition venues , which

undoubtedly attests to the artistic character of these productions.

Some were sold to collectors and two drawings were acquired by a French

museum of contemporary art. The margins for maneuver

Julien Prévieux, plastic artist, pushes to paroxysm this freedom generated

by the gap between the rule and its application by turning this occasion into

an artistic activity. Having come into contact with young police officers from the

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

94 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

Machine Translated by Google Let us also dwell on a case of trickery with numbers

persistent in the application of the police norm thus acquired an artistic value. It

should also be noted that this activity is no more disinterested than the one that

allowed them to present good results to their boss and thus boost their careers and

generate bonuses, since it was agreed between the accredited artist and the police

officers that they would share equally the product of potential sales.

It is also observed that numbers are not necessarily an alternative to violence,

contrary to what Weberian reasoning about the rationalization of the world suggests,

but, instead, they can both support and be supported by it (Samuel, 2014).

with regard to bipartisan negotiations. In 2009, Guadeloupe, a French department

located in the Caribbean, was the scene of a very important popular movement to

fight against price increases. The LKP, the group that gave rise to the movement, did

not believe in the price index produced by the public administration and organized a

survey among traders to establish its own index. They came to the negotiating table

with this data, which allowed them to gain an advantage over the government advised

by the employers' union. But suddenly, even during the discussions, Secretary of

State Yves Jégo, who was in charge, was removed from the process, possibly

because he was considered too open to activists. It was, on the part of the government,

an attempt to transform the framework of the negotiations, at the center of which were

the statistics, which seemed to be badly routed. The LKP reacted, changing the

picture in turn: bonfires were lit at the main road crossings on the island, violent acts

were practiced against commercial establishments, soon popular violence came to

strengthen the negotiators, and the local numbers. The state had no choice but to

grant them almost anything they asked for. It is seen here that the feint can occur not

discreetly, but very openly, in negotiations related to numbers, as well as in any

diplomatic relationship.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

“statativism” as a militant use of quantification 95

Machine Translated by Google The emancipatory effect of this second-level stativism is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to highlight the possibility of an aggregated

reality different from the one established by the institution. For example,

he proclaims: “no, contrary to what the State says, we have shown that

criminality is not in continuous decline, because this decline is better explained by

These sociological, artistic, and militant cases illustrate a two-step

stativism. At the first level, it concerns all agents of an administration and

requires only minimal resources to be put into practice; in particular, it

does not require statistical know-how , as this discipline is not taught to

police officers. It consists of appropriating the data production rules that

serve for self-assessment in order to, more or less discreetly, more or

less openly, adapt them to one's own interests – which can range from

pure weakness and flattery to the boss's expectations to the proudest

independence in the production of works of art. Statistical activity requires

coding, without which there would be no quantified data, but coding,

which, in most cases, is left in the hands of the most dominated agents in

the hierarchy, necessarily leaves them with room for manoeuvre. It always

opens possibilities for them (Thévenot, 1983). To the extent that, as today,

the coder is the person himself who will be evaluated by the data he

encodes, he uses this possibility to his advantage. She emancipates

herself.

On a second level, stativism consists of bringing together all these

local practices and showing that, however silent they may be, they are so

common that the entire institution can be accused of not really pursuing

the objectives it claims. The statist must then resolve the paradox of being

both inside and outside the institution. In fact, it is impossible to obtain a

trail of the coders' discreet operations without being with them inside the

institution and, at the same time, one must have access to a public

platform to report on an aggregate level what has been witnessed. This is

why stativists tend to work in pairs or groups, the typical case being a

police officer associated with a sociologist.

96 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

Machine Translated by Google Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

coding manipulations by the police”. It then designates the possibility of a reality different from the official one. At the same time, it denounces, on the other hand, the institution's ability to falsify reality.

Stativism, therefore, covers a variety of practices ranging from the most absolutely individual to the most collective level. It consists, on the

one hand, in freeing oneself from the rules that authority imposes and, on

the other hand, in revealing the lies it utters. But, at this stage, the

collective he builds is not yet a political subject, endowed with interests

and wills of its own. We will now demonstrate how this subjectification is

statistically possible.

Recent transformations in society have given rise to new social

categories. As was shown in the case of executives (Boltanski, 1982), to

gain recognition, social groups are interested in institutionalizing

themselves statistically. The invention of new social categories – and their

critique – is already, and should be even more so, an important field of

stativism. It concerns, for example, the case of intellectuals in precarious

working conditions, which we will detail here; but many other examples

come to mind, in particular the struggles of ethnic minorities, which deserve long discussions.

Here, the statement is: “the State has the means to lie to us”. It is,

therefore, not about reality that the doubt weighs, but about the action of

the State, which can claim to do one thing (fight crime) while doing another

(manipulate public opinion). The state activists, then, denounce the

possibilities of State action. The latter, of course, does not let himself be

carried away and, as we were able to show elsewhere, when resuming

the structure of fencing moves, the series of attacks and counter-attacks

between the State and stativists is far from over (Didier, 2011b ).

Among the social worlds most strongly affected by the development of neoliberal governmentality is that of artists and professions

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 97

Subjects: defending new categories

Machine Translated by Google is not the only

one, although much greater than that of “precarious intellectuals”, it is similar

to it, except for the fact that the characteristics negatively connoted by

–,

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

98 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

In contrast to this bottom-up strategy, others prefer to go the other

way. Richard Florida (2002) for example – although he notes the emergence

of a “creative class”. This group,

In this way, they encourage “precarious intellectuals” to come together and

count on each other, a task to which they undertake by relating the statistical

results they were able to obtain during their investigation.

Rambach and Rambach are valued here. Not precarious, but always

Efforts to group arts workers and intellectuals into new social categories

have been studied by Cyprien Tasset (2014). This researcher describes

two attempts in this direction, one operated by the base and the other by

the top. The grassroots strategy is illustrated in the book Les intellos

précaires (2001), by Anne and Marine Rambach. For these authors,

“precarious intellectuals ” bring together people vulnerable to the current

economic system, such as researchers without status, artists who struggle

to be paid for their activities, freelance journalists, etc. They are often

educated people , not always young, but who cannot find a stable job and,

therefore, whose lifestyles do not correspond – far from it – to what their level of studies seemed to promise them. Rambach and Rambach's

argument is that this situation transcends individual abilities and

characteristics, and is attributable to a mode of social organization that

devalues intellectual work and even seeks to make it submissive.

intellectuals. The invasion of these professional professions by the

quantifying instruments of managerial command provokes new experiences,

which can reveal an ambivalent, strange, grotesque or, conversely, innovative and stimulating character. Furthermore, the invocation of social

experiences that no longer fit into available formats fuels criticism of official classifications. It even happens that these experiences are inserted in

political and cognitive work aimed at building a new social category capable

of making demands.

Machine Translated by Google willing to exercise their freedom in the job market, members of the class studied by Florida would be looking for creative opportunities.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 99

The struggles for definition between the new classes that intend to

include precarious intellectuals or creatives or the exposure (and, in this

case, the discreet denunciation) of new beings is an important front of

statism involving statistical categories. They are part of the definition of

the subject who will carry the desire and practice of emancipation. The

group in question here has, by definition, quite rich cognitive resources

that can apparently compensate for any specific ignorance in statistics.

Faced with these attempts to aggregate a collective subject, the artist

Once actors recognize the advantage of going through such arguments,

they gather the resources they need (letters, “snowball ” research, wild

desk research), or do not hesitate to turn to the experts who provide them

(consultants, sociologists, statisticians). These associations of competences

are also part of the constitution of the collective. It is not just a matter of

including many individual cases in one

They are not likely to become unnecessary, but rather are the spearheads

of emerging cognitive capitalism.

Brazilian artist Sonia Andrade offers a reconstitution of her own person

and, consequently, of each one of us. In 2019, she presented at the

exhibition ... to the accounts, at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de

Janeiro, a series of wires stretched from floor to ceiling, on which she

hung all the bills she received, classified by the billing companies: water ,

electricity, gas, followed by shorter collections, television, cell phone,

internet provider. Walking through the exhibition, which is very poorly lit,

we see a new being, very strange, made only of figures, in this case,

monetary, which is what “counts” for all these companies to which we are

“subscribers”, sometimes for a long time. It thus builds a new type of

human, quantitative, consumer and held by the signature chains.

Machine Translated by Google Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

single category, it's also a matter of aligning a number of diverse skills to that categorical set.

100 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

Neoliberal governmentality makes great use of indicators. An indicator

is a measurement that transforms a complex phenomenon into a single,

simple value that varies over time. The price index, for example, must indicate

the variation in the cost of products to the consumer – and, therefore, in the

purchasing power of families – and allow variations to be monitored. The

indicator is used to give meaning, to guide action. Anyone who wants to see

an increase in purchasing power must find ways to control price developments.

You can, for example, choose

It differs from the case observed in the police, in which statism is of the order

of revelation: it breaks the institutional reality that proclaims itself with

quantified results, by showing the other reality of widespread cheating and

tricks with numbers. Here, stativism is positive, it seeks to prove that a

category actually exists, when it is not recognized as having existence, and

seeks the means of action that allow its defense. Of course , disclosure and

assertion are not mutually exclusive, and in many cases they are intertwined.

However, these two notions allow us to trace an axis that goes from the

denial of a pre-existing reality to the affirmation of entities that do not yet

exist. But, once the axis has been drawn, the most interesting thing is to

understand the complexity of the mixtures observed between the two extreme

poles of the continuum. This is what the last part of this article is dedicated

to, focusing on indicators.

fight against monetary inflation. But, by construction, an indicator retains from

the real only some aspects considered relevant: here, only those products

that are taken into account in the “basket” of the average family, and no others.

Emancipation, therefore, has a double meaning: it refers, firstly , to the

activity of constituting this collective political subject and, secondly , to the

alignment of a series of possibilities for action by this subject.

Purposes: oppose alternative indicators to the institution

Machine Translated by Google An even more violent case, this time occurring in Brazil, is the count of shootings in the favelas of the Rio de Janeiro region (Hirata; Couto; Grillo; Oliveira, 2017). In fact, in recent decades, exchanges

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 101

Perverse effects can be counted in two ways. On the one hand, obviously unpleasant facts are placed in a series to make their systematic and repeated character visible. An even more effective case, which turns out to be extremely violent, is the case of the number of

suicides at France Telecom, the French telephone company, which was being privatized in a very brutal way. Ivan Du Roy (2009) explains how trade unionists had to count the suicides that occurred in the company to reveal the harmfulness of the management methods that had been implemented.

It thus contributes to consolidating only some aspects of reality and, therefore , neglecting others, which may, however, be considered priorities according to different points of view of the indicator. This can lead to serious political crises associated with these measures. Thus, in Argentina, in 2007, it was demonstrated that the government had tried to manipulate the price index by controlling only the prices taken into account by government statisticians (called upon to disclose them) and not other products. In response, a new index emerged, the “Billion Prices Project”, developed by private economists at MIT, who “mined” the prices offered on the internet by a small number of distributors and produced a different aggregation, but evolving day by day, and largely contradicting the official figures – which were devalued by the scandal (Lury; Gross, 2014). Many other stativist experiences intervene at this level: so that official statistics redistribute the institutions' action priorities, they advocate taking into account other aspects of reality and propose alternative indicators.

Among the latter, some point to the unsuspected perverse effects of public or managerial policies. Others point to the importance and relevance of elements that are not taken into account by official quantitative measures. Some allow us to count what does not (yet) count, others to discuss the indisputable.

Machine Translated by Google 6 See the website https://fogocruzado.org.br/.

Among the struggles that use indicators as weapons or targets, that of the trade unionists at France Telecom must be treated separately. These stativists came up with this simple and devastating idea of counting suicides, which certainly doesn't require very sophisticated statistical skills, but rather human qualities to find the families of people who ended their lives, understand their desperate gesture and determine whether or not it is related. to their working conditions. In others

As for artists, the Superflex group pushes criticism of activity indicators to the level of absurdity. The Visitors Numbers project consists of synchronizing the visitor counting mechanism at the entrance of a museum with a large counting board hanging outside, highlighted, as if this information were the most important of all, as if the only thing that mattered was the museum is very visited. It is , therefore, with bitter irony, to highlight the neoliberal way of managing museums so much that its absurdity becomes tangible.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

102 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

cases, such as the Fogo Cruzado project, the fight against indicators

shootings have multiplied in the daily lives of Rio de Janeiro residents, especially in favelas and urban outskirts. These places live under the “crossfire” of violent actions carried out, on the one hand, by police forces and, on the other, by armed groups of drug traffickers and militiamen who control these neighborhoods. Although ad hoc operations are one of the main reasons for crossfire and violent deaths in Rio de Janeiro, there is no available data on these actions that could fuel the public debate on public security in Rio de Janeiro. A collaborative research project between researchers and activists from the city of Rio de Janeiro enabled the construction of a database on “specific operations”, characterized as incursions by security agencies (civil and military) in favelas and popular neighborhoods.6 The project Collaborative aims, therefore, to expand collective reflection on the problem of public security in Brazil, building data that qualifies the guidance on the use of force by the State.

Machine Translated by Google When examining more contemporary practices, we saw that, firstly, they consist of highlighting and taking advantage of all the margins of freedom that the rules for producing ciphers leave to the agents who are subject to them.

If we now return to the axis composed of revelation and affirmation, we will place the count of suicides on the side of the purest revelation, affirming nothing other than the emptiness of death in the face of the established

order, and then the artistic act that consists in ridiculing this system, which it is not entirely negative in that it offers a new place where the system is displayed. Then comes the count of shootings, which aims to institute another measure of violence that takes into account that produced by the police. Many methods of emancipation therefore occur between the destruction of the institution's goals and the affirmation of alternative ends.

Statativism is a banner that brings together a wide variety of practices that have in common that they place statistics at the service of emancipation.

Statistics is not a body of immutable laws; on the contrary, those who practice it learn to play with it without making mistakes or infractions. Second , stativism consists of using various methods of quantification to produce groups, subjects that arise from an aspiration to emancipate themselves from the conditions to which they are subject. Unity is strength, and statistics are one of the first foundations of these unions. Finally, it consists of redefining the objectives pursued by institutions through statistics. No

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

Other numbers for other possible

“statativism” as a militant use of quantification 103

institutional means knowing them well enough to analyze, decompose and recompose them or, like Superflex, copy them and publish them elsewhere. This stativism requires certain technical knowledge. Its effectiveness, then, largely depends on knowing why institutional indicators should be questioned, and for what purpose. Once again, stativism is emancipatory to the extent that it gives the possibility of making certain material realities exist, using them for certain objectives, certain ends, which are yet to be determined.

Machine Translated by Google Accurately denounced as the basic equipment of the “iron cage” of capitalist reason, quantification should not, however, be neglected in favor of the exaltation of qualities, singularities and the immeasurable.

These practices cut across the fields of art, research and activism, all of which

highlight the value of statistics as a political argument.

Above all, if a certain form of activism by numbers has become essential

today, it is, in the first place, due to the central role played by the instruments of

quantification in maintaining the fatalities against which the struggles for

emancipation begin. Indeed, coding, categories, indicators, in short, all statistical

entities make a decisive contribution to building sustainable realities.

Such a waiver would be a mistake, because the restrictive stability of statistical

entities is not unshakable. On the contrary, the attention given to the instigation

of measures and indicators reveals their creative character and, many times, their

there is reason to let the elements of reality that determine the direction of our actions impose on us. In all three cases, it is a question of taking into account

the authority of the facts, but without ever forgetting that we participate in its

realization, in particular, thanks to statistics, which allow us to articulate it with

the elements of the world to which we have privileged access.

In particular, it dispels one of the misunderstandings that divide potential

opposition to authoritarianism by numbers. In fact, although the Romantic

tradition – developed with industrialization and still alive today in new forms – is

a powerful source of criticism, it tends to perceive statistics only as an emanation

of the “cold, quantifying spirit of the industrial age”, embodied, for example, by

the character Thomas Gradgrind, in Dickens (Löwy; Sayre, 2010, p. 20).

However, the range of statist experiences we have gathered includes uses of

numbers that manage to keep in touch with the mechanisms of the neoliberal

city, while at the same time being situated at the level of free creativity. Far from

extending the existential desert of utilitarianism, protest inventions based on

numbers extend the autonomy of actors and can, at times, present, in addition

to their emancipatory scope, an aesthetic value.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

104 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

Machine Translated by Google ability to eclipse the older ones. A means of reducing uncertainties or opening up practical possibilities, statistics is also a disciplinary crossroads (mathematics, social sciences, accounting, administration,

etc.) where new encounters can be stimulated.

From there, “another number is possible”: what a hegemonic logic of quantification has established, an informed statist practice can seek to undo or, at least, shake it. This deviation from the slogan of alterglobalization is not here the enchantment of an indeterminate possible,

Bakhtin (1982) allows us to understand why. He shows, based on the work of François Rabelais, also peppered with games with numbers, that the structure of laughter is ambivalent. On the one hand, it depreciates official reality, through irony, parody and hyperbole. This is a well-known humorous lever, operated in particular by Superflex. But that is not all. On the other hand, laughter accompanies the joy of the counter-proposal, the materialization of a new unexpected reality, the freedom conquered from the shackles of the established reality, the productive transformation. Bakhtin speaks of the “ creative force of laughter” (Bakhtin, 1982, p. 80). He writes that “laughter debases and materializes” (p. 29), it is concomitant with the degradation of the officer who was great, and with the materialization and liberation, from the growth of what is most consistent with reality. The works of Le Chevalier, de Prévieux with the police of the 14th arrondissement, illustrated this wonderfully. And also the works of Pierre Bourdieu, who said: “sociology should be fun” and tried to make his readers smile thanks to “a new use of statistics” (Gollac, 2004, p. 29). Emancipation can also take the form of collective laughter.7

Finally, we will insist, like Ted Porter (2013), on the humor present in these statist approaches. We could, a priori, think that nothing is further from laughter than numbers, and yet this is not the case.

“statativism” as a militant use of quantification 105

7 Bakhtin insists that Rabelaisian laughter, productive and affirmative laughter, is popular. It is found in carnivals, fairs, on the stages of public theaters. This point allows us to reconsider the criticism that Boltanski (2009) qualifies as existential and that he previously attributes to artists who work in romantic solitude. Existential criticism can, without a doubt, also be humorous and collective.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

Machine Translated by Google Emmanuel Didier is Director of Research at CNRS, Center Maurice Halbwachs, Ecole Normale Supérieure-EHESS and Director of the Médecin-Humanité program at Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. ÿ [email protected]

Isabelle Bruno is Professor of Political Science and Junior Fellow at the Institut universitaire de France (IUF), CERAPS (CNRS/University of Lille), Lille, France. ÿ [email protected]

but a call for the production of quantified objects that reconfigure the possible in a direction desired and, it is hoped, favorable to the majority. Of course, the fate of an alternative indicator or the enumeration of a

new social category is uncertain. These initiatives can “establish themselves” in the public space or go unnoticed. What is certain is that, in comparison with other intellectual productions, debates and disputes concerning numbers in society tend to take on a notable practical significance and, why not, a happy – even comic – comeback.

References

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

106 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

5. BORIS, Samuel. Statistics and political violence: reflections on the social conflict in 2009 in Guadeloupe. Partecipazione & Conflitto, v. 7, no. 2, p. 237-257, 2014.

6. BOLTANSKI, Luc. Quelles statistiques pour quelles critiques ? In: BRUNO, Isabelle; DIDIER, Emmanuel; PRÉVIEUX, Julien (eds.) Statactivisme : comment lutter avec des nombres. Paris: Zones, 2014. p. 33-50.

7. BOLTANSKI, Luc. Les cadres : la formation d'un groupe social. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1982.

8. BOURDIEU, Pierre. Sur l'Etat. Cours au Collège de France (1989-1992). Paris: Seuil, 2012.

9. BOLTANSKI, Luc. From the critique. Precis de sociologie de l'émancipation. Paris: Gallimard, 2009.

10. BAKHTIN, Mikhail. L'œuvre de François Rabelais et la culture populaire au Moyen Age et sous la Renaissance. Paris: Gallimard, 1982.

Machine Translated by Google 18. DIDIER, Emmanuel. L'État néolibéral ment-il ? “Chanstique” et statistics de police. Terrain, no. 57, p. 66-81, 2011.

12. BRUNO, Isabelle; DIDIER, Emmanuel; VITALE, Tommaso. Statactivism: forms of action between disclosure and affirmation. Partecipazione & Conflitto, v. 7, no. 2, p. 198-220, 2014.

13. DIDIER, Emmanuel. Globalization of quantitative policing: between management and statactivism. Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 44, no. 1, p. 515-

14. CAILLÉ, Alain. De l'idee même de richesse. Paris: La Découverte, 2012.

534, 2018.

14. CHAMPY, Florent. La Sociologie des professions. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2009.

15. DIDIER, Emmanuel. Politique du nombre de morts. AOC average, April 16,

16. https://aoc.media/opinion/2020/04/15/politique-du-nombre-de-morts/

17. BOURDIEU, Pierre; HAACKE, Hans. Free echange. Paris: Le Seuil/Les Presses du réel, 1994.

18. DESROSIÈRES, Alain. Managing the Economy. In: ROSS, Dorothy; PORTER, Theodore M. The Cambridge History of Science, v. 7: The modern social sciences,

19. p. 553-564.

20. DIDIER, Emmanuel. Quantitative marbling, New conceptual tools for the sociohistory of quantification. Anton Wilhelm Amo Lectures, n. 7. Halle: Martin LutherUniversitat Halle-Wittenberg Press, 2021. https://wcms.itz.uni-halle.de/

21. BOURDIEU, Pierre; PASSERON, Jean-Claude. Les héritiers : les étudiants et la culture. Paris: Les Editions de de Minuit, 1964.

22. DESROSIÈRES, Alain. Pour une sociologie historique de la quantification.

download.php?down=58212&elem=3346065

9. BRUNO, Isabelle. Défaire l'arbitraire des faits. De l'art de gouverner (et de résister) par les “données probantes”. Revue Française de Socio-Economie, n. 2, p. 213-227, 2015. https://doi.org/10.3917/rfse.hs1.0213

Paris: Presses de l'Ecole des Mines, 2008.

22. DU ROY, Ivan. Orange stressé. Paris: La Découverte, 2009.

23. BRUNO, Isabelle; DIDIER, Emmanuel. Benchmarking. L'État sous pression statistique. Paris: La Découverte, 2013.

24. DESROSIÈRES, Alain. La statistique, outil de libération ou outil de pouvoir ?

25. BRUNO, Isabelle; DIDIER, Emmanuel; PREVIEUX, Julien (dir.). Statactivism.

In: BRUNO, Isabelle; DIDIER, Emmanuel; PRÉVIEUX, Julien (eds.) Statactivisme : comment lutter avec des nombres. Paris: Zones, 2014. p. 51-66.

Comment lutter avec des nombres. Paris: Zones, 2014.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 107

Machine Translated by Google 35. PORTER, Theodore. Funny numbers. Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, no. 4, p. 585-598, 2013.

29. HAACKE, Hans; BECKER, Howard S.; BURNHAM, Jack; WALTON, John.

30. RAMBACH, Anne; RAMBACH, Marine. Les precaires intellos. Paris: Fayard,

Hans Haacke: framing and being framed; 7 works 1970-75. Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia Collage of Art and Design, 1975.

37. SALTELLI, Andrea et al. Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto. Nature, no. 582, p. 482-484, 2020.

38. HIRATA, Daniel; COUTO, Maria I.; GRILLO, Carolina; OLLIVEIRA, Cecilia. Tire changes. La production de données sur la violence armée dans des opérations de police à Rio de Janeiro. Statistics et société, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 31-39, 2019.

39. SILVERMAN, Eli B. NYPD battles crime. Innovative strategies in policing.

40. ECF - Ecole de la Cause Freudienne (ed.). Quelle liberté pour le sujet à l'époque de la folie quantitative. Paris: Pleins Feux, 2008.

41. LÖWY, Michael; SAYRE, Robert. Spirits of feu. Figures of anti-capitalist romanticism. Paris: Editions du Sandre, 2010.

Boston: Northwestern University Press, 1999.

24. ETERNO, John E.; SILVERMAN, Eli B. The crime numbers game: management by manipulation. New York: CRC Press, 2012.

25. LURY, Celia; GROSS, Ana. The downs and ups of the consumer price index in Argentina: from national statistics to big data. Partecipazione & Conflitto, v. 7, no. 2, p. 258-277, 2014.

26. FLORIDA, Richard. The rise of the creative class. And how it's transforming work, leisure and everyday life. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

27. MILNER, Jean-Claude. La Politique des choses. Court traité politique I.

28. GENEL, Katia. L'autorité des faits : Horkheimer face à la fermeture des possibles. Traces, v. 24, no. 1, p. 107-119, 2013.

Lagrasse: Verdier, 2011.

27. GOLLAC, Michel. La rigueur et la rigolade. À propos de l'usage des méthodes quantitatives par Pierre Bourdieu. Courrier des statistics, n. 112, p. 29-36, 2004.

28. MITCHELL, Katharyne; BECKETT, Katherine. Securing the global city: crime, consulting, risk, and ratings in the production of urban space. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, v. 15, no. 1, p. 75-99, 2008.

29. GORI, Roland; CASSIN, Barbara; LAVAL, Christian (dir.). L'Appel des appels pour une insurrection des consciences. Paris: Mille et une nuits, 2009.

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

108 Emmanuel Didier & Isabelle Bruno

Machine Translated by Google 43. TOPALOV, Christian. Naissance du chômeur : 1880-1910. Paris: Albin Michel, 1994.

39. PIRIOU, Jean Paul. L'indice des prix. Paris: La Découverte, 1992.

40. STATISTIQUE ET SOCIETE. Paris. Société Française de Statistique (SFdS), v. 7, no. 1, June 2019.

41. THEVENOT, Laurent. L'économie du codage social. Critiques de l'Economie Politique, n. 23-24, p. 188-222, 1983.

42. TOUCHELAY, Beatrice. Les ordres de la mesure des prix. Political struggles, bureaucracies and social autour de l'indice des prix à la consommation (1911- 2012). Politix, vol. 27, no. 105, p.117-138, 2014.

43. TASSET, Cyprien. Les “Intellos précaires” et la class réative. In: BRUNO, Isabelle; DIDIER, Emmanuel; PRÉVIEUX, Julien (eds.) Statactivisme : comment lutter avec des nombres. Paris: Zones, 2014. p. 117-132.

“Statativism” as a militant use of quantification 109

Received on: 17 Dec. 2020

Accepted on: 15 Mar. 2021

Sociologias, Porto Alegre, year 23, n. 56, Jan-Apr 2021, p. 82-109.

Machine Translated by Google