A World of Standards but not a Standard World: Toward a … · 2017-09-26 · modern world equivalent across cultures, time, and geography. Standardization may seem to be politically

SO36CH04-Timmermans ARI 2 June 2010 23:5

A World of Standards but nota Standard World: Towarda Sociology of Standardsand Standardization∗

Stefan Timmermans and Steven Epstein1Department of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095;email: [email protected] of Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208;email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2010. 36:69–89

First published online as a Review in Advance onApril 9, 2010

The Annual Review of Sociology is online atsoc.annualreviews.org

This article’s doi:10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102629

Copyright c© 2010 by Annual Reviews.All rights reserved

0360-0572/10/0811-0069$20.00

∗We dedicate this article to the memory of ourfriend and mentor Leigh Star.

Key Words

science and technology, expertise and professionals, economics,politics, standard-setting organizations

Abstract

Standards and standardization aim to render the world equivalent acrosscultures, time, and geography. Standards are ubiquitous but underap-preciated tools for regulating and organizing social life in modernity,and they lurk in the background of many sociological works. Review-ing the relevance of standards and standardization in diverse theoreticaltraditions and sociological subfields, we point to the emergence andinstitutionalization of standards, the difficulties of making standardswork, resistance to standardization, and the multiple outcomes of stan-dards. Rather than associating standardization with totalizing narrativesof globalization or dehumanization, we call for careful empirical anal-ysis of the specific and unintended consequences of different sorts ofstandards operating in distinct social domains.

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THE UBIQUITY OF STANDARDS

The world’s cargo moves steadily from placeto place inside millions of rectangular boxes—standard-sized containers, bearing corporatelogos such as Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, andCOSCO, that can be stacked neatly on trains, inports, and in the holds of ships. Students aroundthe world are regularly assessed and ranked us-ing standardized tests, whose outcomes maydetermine their career paths. Many doctors,hospitals, and health insurers have embracedevidence-based medicine, promoting standardguidelines to make decisions about how pa-tients should be treated. An ever-increasingnumber of national and international standard-setting bodies devote themselves to determin-ing which standards should rule and how stan-dards might be enforced. It is easy to observehow life increasingly depends on the creation,institutionalization, use, and dissemination ofdiverse kinds of standards; it is likewise clearhow often political activity takes the form ofresistance to the imposition of standards or de-bates about their appropriate makeup or sway.Yet despite significant and diverse sociologicalwork that intersects with the issue of standard-ization, the study of standardization remains anunderappreciated framework for the analysis ofmany core aspects of modernity.

In this review, we place standards and stan-dardization in the foreground as ubiquitousbut underestimated phenomena that help reg-ulate and calibrate social life by rendering themodern world equivalent across cultures, time,and geography. Standardization may seem tobe politically neutral on the surface, but infact it poses sharp questions for democracy:How do we hold the standard makers account-able? Whose benefits are served by standards?When standards conflict, which ones shouldprevail? Standardization also raises questionsabout the role of science and expertise in reg-ulation: What evidence is sufficient or neces-sary to implement standards? Who should setstandards? Which risks are acceptable? Finally,the spread of standardization sparks numer-ous concerns about consequences. How does

standardization work in domains marked by in-dividualism and localism? How much standard-ization is necessary for a standard to function asa standard? And, importantly, what does it meanto be nonstandard in a world where standardsreign (Star 1991)?

While drawing on general literature on stan-dards from many fields (Bowker & Star 1999,Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000, Lampland & Star2009), we emphasize the sociological signif-icance of taking standards and standardiza-tion seriously. After defining and characteriz-ing our topic, we describe how standardizationhas emerged as a sociological concern amongscholars investigating a range of domains of so-cial life, even while standardization has cometo mean somewhat different things to scholarsfocused on different sorts of problems. Draw-ing on the existing literature, we then proceedto analyze examples of key aspects of standard-ization, including creation and resistance, im-plementation, and outcomes. We conclude byemphasizing the distinctly sociological contri-bution to the study of standards as well as howthe study of standards may, in the future, ben-efit the work of sociologists who normally con-sider themselves to be studying other sorts ofphenomena. Throughout, we are attentive tothe normative dimensions of standardization asa powerful, sometimes subtle, and sometimesnot-so-subtle means of organizing modern life.Yet we argue against any simple suggestion thatstandards or standardization are inherently ei-ther good or bad. Instead, we call for careful em-pirical analysis of the specific (and sometimesunintended) consequences of different sorts ofstandards operating in distinct social domains.

DEFINITIONS

The literary theorist Raymond Williams (1985)traced the English word “standard,” in its mod-ern senses of a source of authority and a levelof achievement, to the fifteenth century. Bycontrast, he noted, “standardization” came intorecognizable use only in the late nineteenthcentury by way of the domains of science (stan-dardizing the conditions of an experiment) and

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manufacturing (standardizing parts). Williamsalso recognized the odd tension between thesetwo etymologically related terms: Standards aretypically deemed laudatory; they are somethingone aspires to live up to. But standardization inits popular uses is derogatory; it connotes a dullsameness, the suppression of individuality in theservice of industrial uniformity. The deroga-tory connotation persists; it is well capturedby Ritzer’s (2000) McDonaldization-of-societythesis, as well as by much writing that views thestandardization of people as inherently dehu-manizing. Yet it is hard to see how standards canbe purely good while standardization is whollybad, given that standardization presumes theexistence of standards, whereas standards can-not endure with any potency unless theyare standardized across social domains (Busch2000). Standards and standardization typicallyimply one another, which means that we needgreater nuance to understand their implicationsfor a world significantly shaped by both.

Drawing on Bowker & Star (1999), wedefine standardization as a process of con-structing uniformities across time and space,through the generation of agreed-upon rules.The standards thereby created tend to spanmore than one community of practice oractivity site; they make things work togetherover distance or heterogeneous metrics; andthey are usually backed up by external bodies ofsome sort, such as professional organizations,manufacturers’ associations, or the state. In afurther elaboration, Lampland & Star (2009)note that standards often are found nestedwithin other standards, that they are distributedrelatively unevenly across the social landscape,and that they prescribe ethics and values inways that matter greatly for individuals. Giventhe range of meanings packed into the term, itis not surprising that standardization likewisehas many possible antonyms: Depending onone’s motivating question, the opposite ofstandardization might be flexibility, discre-tion, interpretation, diversity, individualism,uniqueness, arbitrariness, anomie, or chaos.

Brunsson & Jacobsson (2000) emphasizethat the promulgation and enforcement of

standards is a central type of social regulation.Standards may productively substitute forvarious other forms of authoritative rule.When organizations or states are weak andcannot coerce behavior through direct orders,standards can fill in the gap to coordinateactivity (Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000, p. 32).And although standards are often promulgatedby experts, they may come to function as analternative to expert authority—a way of em-bedding authority in rules and systems ratherthan in credentialed professionals (Brunsson &Jacobsson 2000, p. 42). At the same time, reg-ulation via standards can serve as an alternativeto regulation through social norms and con-ventions (Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000, p. 12).To be sure, there is a fuzzy line separating thedomain of standards from that of norms andconventions (Lampland & Star 2009, p. 24). Al-though many standards (for example, buildingcodes) are specified in highly formal ways, otherstandards (such as the high standards of conductexpected for a vocation) rely on implicit, sharedunderstandings. In this review, we are primarilyinterested in the more or less formal standards,which tend to be those developed and adoptedthrough explicit procedures that historians cantrace. However, there are important examplesof scholarship concerning informal standards(Boltanski & Thevenot 2006, Smith 1993), andformal and informal standards may often serveto reinforce one another in practice.

Standards and standardization are thus om-nipresent conduits of a modernizing and glob-alizing world. Yet as Lampland & Star (2009,p. 11) observe, standards quite often fall intothe category of “boring things” that fail to elicitmuch attention or scrutiny. Although standardsare often formally (or legally) negotiated out-comes, they also have a way of sinking belowthe level of social visibility, eventually becom-ing part of the taken-for-granted technical andmoral infrastructure of modern life. Ironically,however, it may be just this relative invisibilitythat gives standards their “inertia,” as Bowker& Star (1999, p. 14) call it, such that chang-ing them or ignoring them can be difficult,time-consuming, and costly (Thevenot 2009).

www.annualreviews.org • Standards and Standardization 71

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Standards certainly are not wholly determina-tive of the social behaviors that they purportto regulate, as we discuss in more detail below.Certainly compliance with standards often hasa more voluntary dimension to it than compli-ance with many other forms of social regulation(Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000, p. 36). Yet stan-dards can rarely be ignored.

We find it useful to classify standards intofour important subtypes (Timmermans & Berg2003). Design standards set structural specifi-cations: They define the properties and fea-tures of tools and products. Such standardsare explicit and more or less detailed spec-ifications of individual components of socialand/or technical systems, ensuring their uni-formity and their mutual compatibility. Termi-nological standards, such as the InternationalClassification of Diseases, ensure stability ofmeaning over different sites and times and areessential to the aggregation of individual ele-ments into larger wholes. Performance stan-dards set outcome specifications. For example, aperformance standard can specify the maximumlevel of complication rates deemed acceptablefor specific surgical operations. The last cate-gory is procedural standards, which specify howprocesses are to be performed. Such standardsdelineate the steps that are to be taken whenspecified conditions are met.

THINKING SOCIOLOGICALLYABOUT STANDARDS

The sociological literature reveals a fascinationwith a plethora of standards: labor standards,the standard of living, sexual double standards,grading standards, human rights standards,standards of proof in court, food standards,animal welfare standards, standard time,safety standards, gold standards, standards ofdecency, national standards in education, andmany more. Yet while these specific standardsare a frequent object of sociological attention,most such writing adopts the terms in theireveryday senses and eschews examinationof the broader sociological significance ofstandard-setting and standardizing. In 1996,

Singer (1996) issued a call for what he termeda sociology of standards, but his concern waswith the perception of declining standardsamong major social institutions—a very differ-ent project from the one proposed here. Webegin instead by excavating the history, withinsocial theory and sociology, of an engagementwith standardization as a process and standardsas a defining aspect of modern life.

Many dominant concerns in nineteenth-and twentieth-century social theory prefigurean interest in standardization, even if the termitself was rarely used. Marx’s analysis of capi-talism examined the standardization of condi-tions for economic activity in a capitalist mar-ket, as well as the spread of the commodity asa standard mode of economic exchange (Marx1867 [1977]; see also Busch 2000). In addi-tion, Marx’s depiction of the relentless growthof a world market pointed, as a global con-sequence, to an increasing homogeneity, botheconomic and cultural. Not only were produc-tion and consumption assuming a cosmopoli-tan character in place of national distinctive-ness, he argued, but “as in material, so alsoin intellectual production. The intellectual cre-ations of individual nations become commonproperty. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossi-ble, and from the numerous national and lo-cal literatures, there arises a world literature”(Marx & Engels 1848 [1978], p. 476).

Weber extended the analysis of social ho-mogenization by studying the “leveling” effectof the great bureaucratic machines of modernlife (Weber 1946, p. 226), which emphasized“the abstract regularity of the execution ofauthority” and rejected on principle the notionof doing business “from case to case” (Weber1946, p. 224). Thus bureaucracy furtheredthe emergence of the mass in place of distinctindividuals. Moreover, bureaucracy both exem-plified and promoted the broader processes ofrationalization that were manifested every-where in modernity. Weber’s analysis ofrationalization pointed to such examples inthe modern West as the rise of standardforms of bookkeeping, musical notation, and


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experimentation in science (Weber 1930[2002], pp. xxvii–xlii).

To be sure, not every social theorist has as-sociated modernity with processes that resultin the homogenizing of social forms. Indeed,Durkheim viewed sameness (mechanical soli-darity) as the distinctive feature and constitutiveglue of premodern societies, whereas modernsocieties instead were held together through theconnections among highly differentiated, butinterdependent, components (organic solidar-ity) (Durkheim 1933 [1984]). Yet, as Zerubavel(1982) makes clear in his Durkheimian anal-ysis of the rise of standard time, even mod-ern, social organization may frequently dependon processes of standardization for its func-tional success. Zerubavel treats the demarca-tion of time zones within countries as an ex-ample of organic solidarity, in which regionsbecame marked as distinct yet interdependent.However, this geographic differentiation wasconstructed only through the imposition of anoverarching framework that subjected the ab-stract concept of time to a precise, formal, anduniversal specification.

Much subsequent theoretical and empiri-cal work has intersected with the theme ofstandardization, notably including the neoin-stitutionalist concern with understanding thecauses and consequences of “institutional iso-morphisms” (DiMaggio & Powell 1983). Thefocus of neoinstitutional theory on exposure tosimilar norms and rules has been used to exam-ine the diffusion of standards across organiza-tions within a similar institutional environment(Dahl & Hansen 2006). The diffusion of stan-dards may also serve as a way for organizationsto institutionalize, albeit in pro forma or ritu-alized ways, systems of compliance with legallyimposed mandates (Edelman 1992).

By a different route, Foucault’s analysis ofthe gradual historical diffusion of disciplinarytechniques from the margins to the center ofmodern societies was meant to account for un-expected uniformities across the range of insti-tutions, practices, and knowledge systems thatconstitute modern subjectivity: “Is it surpris-ing that prisons resemble factories, schools,

barracks, hospitals, which all resemble pris-ons?” (Foucault 1979, p. 228). To be sure, Fou-cault’s term for the process that underlay thesocial control functions of such institutions wasnormalization, yet many of his concrete exam-ples of disciplinary techniques concern the for-mal standards of modern organizations, ratherthan norms alone.

Through these various analytical pathways,a concern with standards and standardizationhas made its way explicitly into numerous socio-logical subfields. For example, within economicsociology, Carruthers & Stinchcome (1999)have analyzed how market liquidity presup-poses an agreement that commodities are stan-dard and homogeneous, and they describe sev-eral alternative routes to the standardization ofcommodities, including standardized manufac-turing, the grading of natural products, and le-gal mechanisms. Sociolinguistics is another do-main that has been affected by the study of stan-dards, particularly with respect to the study ofhow standard languages emerge through sup-pression of nonstandard variants (Trenz 2007).In education, standards for teaching subjects,and standardized assessments of both studentsand teachers, have been critically examined forbias and effectiveness (Koretz 2008).

Because of the role that scientific and tech-nological expertise plays in standard creation, alarge proportion of the sociological writing onstandards and standardization comes from thefield of science studies. This is no coincidence:Science itself benefited from standardization,and scientists and engineers continue to pro-vide technical expertise for standard creation.Several historians and social scientists contendthat standardization fueled the growth of scien-tists’ authority (Porter 1995, Shapin & Shaffer1985). At the same time, much work in sciencestudies has critically examined how standard-ization is made possible in science, emphasizingthe complex negotiations required to createstandardized materials and tools (Berg 1997,Casper & Clarke 1998, Fujimura 1992, Hogle1995, Jordan & Lynch 1998, Latour & Woolgar1979, Timmermans & Berg 2003). Standardspromise to provide the optimal technical


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solution for particular problems, and scientistsand engineers are often called upon to provideexpertise for standard-setting. This does notmean, however, that standards are intrinsicallyneutral. Standards’ objectivity, universality,and optimality are hard won victories that canbe heavily contested by third parties lobbingaccusations of bias and politicization.

Analyses of standardization that come fromscience studies are notable for emphasizing thelocal and the contingent and for treating “uni-versals” as a complex construct (Timmermans& Berg 1997). By contrast, a dominant thrust ofmuch of the work from social theory and soci-ology that we have described as being relevantto the study of standards is a tendency within itto emphasize the link between standardizationand the homogenization or flattening of sociallife in modernity. An immediate and importantrejoinder concerns the rise of post-Fordisteconomic activity, as well as associated culturalforms, that are organized according to a differ-ent logic: In place of mass marketing and massconsumption, the model becomes one of nichemarketing and “flexible specialization” (Amin1994). We consider this point essential for afull understanding of the place of standardsand standardization in the world today. On theone hand, it is important to observe that grandnarratives of homogenization not only areoften overstated in failing to account for localinterpretations, but also may fail to engagewith significant shifts away from, or challengesto, economic, social, or cultural homogeneity.But on the other hand, there is every reasonto believe that post-Fordist production andconsumption, even while reacting againsthomogeneity, are also thoroughly dependenton standards of various sorts. Clearly, theseinclude design standards and proceduralstandards, without which post-Fordist (or anyother) economic activity could not be carriedout. But in addition, niche marketing presumesa more or less standardized specification ofwhich niche groups are interpellated by mar-keters or of the limited menu of options thatare made available to consumers. The activistNaomi Klein captures the latter point well in

her description of the modern-day shoppingmall food court, which offers consumers, inplace of a single standardized product a laMcDonald’s, a fairly standard array of ethnicfood options (Klein 2002, p. 117). In short,the creation and enforcement of standards isan important research topic regardless of theextent to which standardizing processes seek toproduce, or succeed in generating, broad-scalehomogeneity.

It should be clear from the preceding consid-eration of the place of standards and standard-ization within social theory and sociologicalsubfields that standards emerge as a sociologi-cal topic from multiple (if overlapping) vantagepoints. (One might say there is little standard-ization in the study of standardization.) As aconsequence of the many resonances of stan-dards within sociology, the study of standardsmay intersect with the study of numerous othertopics, including objectification (Timmermans& Almeling 2009), formalization (Lampland &Star 2009, Stinchcombe 2001), quantification(Espeland & Stevens 2008, Porter 1995),routinization, classification (Bowker & Star1999), commensuration (Espeland & Stevens1998), commodification, evaluation (Thevenot2009), regulation (Cambrosio et al. 2009), andrationalization (Carruthers & Espeland 1991,Berg 1997) and the elaboration of standardforms of problem-solving such as policyparadigms (Hall 1993), templates, assemblages(Li 2005, Ong & Collier 2005), and repertoiresof contention (Tarrow 1998, pp. 20–21).

Yet while many bodies of sociological workengage with standards and standardization, rel-atively few scholars analyze standards directly.In the next sections, we offer conceptual toolsand vantage points to study standards as stan-dards. For heuristic reasons, we subdivide thelife course of standards into the phases of cre-ation, implementation and resistance, and out-comes. Of course, in practice these processestend to blur into each other: Much creationwork occurs during what is supposed to bethe implementation stage of standards, and oneoutcome of standardization is often the creationof yet more standards.


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THE CREATION ANDRESISTANCE OF STANDARDS

It is impossible to determine the first widelyused standard or to write a singular historyof standardization. Standards can be plausiblyfound wherever archeological records indicatesome form of communication. Thus, in Pom-peii, visitors can still admire the mensa pon-deraria in the temple of Apollo—the table ofstandard volumes used by merchants and theircustomers to measure goods. As the histori-cal record improves, we find more examplesof standards. Yet the history of standards isneither linear nor cumulative, although manyauthors subscribe to the notion that increasedglobalization requires more standardization(Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000, Krislov 1997,Tamm Hallstrom 2004).

Each standard has its own history, and it isthe specificity of that history that makes thestandard a compelling topic of social analysis.The origins of the procedural standards for-mulated by scientific management gurus in thefirst decades of the twentieth century involvea different set of aims, logics, and stakeholders(Noble 1982) than, for example, the standard-ization of rapeseed in China (Tanaka & Busch2003). These standards originate as plausiblesolutions to unique historical contingencies. Itis only embedded within this historical contextthat a standard’s creation can be appreciated asbeing (as the case may be) remarkably innova-tive or surprisingly conservative.

Still, we can distill some common themesthat recur in the emergence of standards. Onesuch theme is that standard creation is funda-mentally a social act. Although theoretically oneperson could create a standard, most standardsare built collectively and, in order to work in astandardized way, require some form of buy-inby multiple others. A key issue in studying stan-dard creation is then to map the interactionsamong the multiple parties involved in the cre-ation process, even paying attention to thosethat could reasonably be expected to be in-cluded but are currently not part of the creationprocess (Clarke 1991). We should note why

some parties opt for standardization in light ofalternative courses of action and what the cost isof standard creation. We should also pay atten-tion to the actual standards that certain groupstend to create. Standards differ in scope, speci-ficity, flexibility, exactitude, cost, and payoff.The creation of standards can thus be thoughtof as the meeting of numerous parties with theaim of obtaining legitimate coordination, com-parability, and compatibility across contexts. Inthis section, we emphasize the roles played byscientists, engineers, representatives of indus-try, courts, states, standard-setting bodies, andactivists.

Because of required technical expertise andthe legitimacy awarded to science, we often findclusters of scientists and engineers among stan-dard creators. They may work for research anddevelopment purposes closely related to theirjobs (Webster & Eriksson 2008), but may alsoply their expertise for industry and trade orga-nizations, the military, state regulators, and ad-vocacy organizations ( Jordan & Lynch 1998).The professionalization of the field of engineer-ing coincided with a widespread standardiza-tion of objects and tools. Engineering societiesat the beginning of the twentieth centurycreated their own standardization committeesand aimed for intercompany standardization(Noble 1982). And in the domain of science,“scientists strive for standardization in ren-dering their somewhat ad hoc activities in thelaboratory into replicable and reputable publicaccounts” (Brown 1993, p. 156). Of course,not all standards reflect technical and scientificexpertise. Some standards, such as corporategovernance codes, are based on the practicalexperience of industry insiders (Seidl 2007).

An extensive literature documents that theinitiative for many standards over the past 150years came from the fields of industry, busi-ness, and trade (Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000,Chandler 1977, Krislov 1997, Morgan 1989,Tamm Hallstrom 2004). Economic historiansargue that the need for standards emergedwhen production processes and goods crossedgeographical boundaries (Chandler 1977,Morgan 1989, Pollard 1983, Shenhav 1999).


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Diverse manufacturing techniques and indus-trial products generated much duplication andconfusion. Each company created its machinedparts, with little regard to compatibility withothers. Competition thus threatened to slowdown the rise of corporations (Noble 1982).A national railroad system, for example, wasimpossible without agreed-upon track sizes.Two U.S. trade organizations, the AmericanRailway Association and the Master CarBuilders Association, adapted the standardgauge track in 1886 and standardized automaticcouplers and air brakes in 1893 (Beniger 1986).

Standards creation in the areas of trade andbusiness in this period of rapid industrializa-tion occurred through either top-down initia-tives or organic bottom-up processes. Ratherthan being a necessary and inevitable require-ment for capitalism, standardization occurredat varying rates in different fields (Noble 1984).In the electrical industry, where relatively fewcompanies competed, standardization occurredrapidly. The more fragmented and diversechemical industry had to await corporate con-solidation before standardization was possi-ble. Stakeholders in some fields counted onthe emergence of a market leader with a pro-prietary industry standard (Genschel 1997).Historians of science have documented thisprocess of gradual consolidation around an in-dustry standard—for example, the fight be-tween Sony’s Betamax and JVC’s VHS videostandards in the late 1970s (Yasunori & Imai1993).

Even in the business world, standard-settingwas not just an industry-driven process. Gov-ernments and courts stimulated standardiza-tion. An early government-sponsored study ofsteam boiler accidents, for example, showedthat many explosions were due to a lack of stan-dardized boiler parts (Shenhav 1999). WorldWar I legitimized governmental standardiza-tion efforts when the U.S. Congress, with thesupport of then–Secretary of State HerbertHoover, issued mandatory specifications forwar-related purchases. Hoover also organizedthe Division of Simplified Practice, whichdeveloped procedures for cutting down on

various sizes, varieties, and grades of commodi-ties (Shenhav 1999, p. 63). During the war,a widespread standardization effort of materi-als, machinery, and parts was coupled with adrive for product simplification, aimed at reduc-ing industrial inefficiency, but also leading to aconsolidation of industries, with smaller man-ufacturers disappearing in the wake of strongercorporations (Morgan 1989).

In the same period, courts were another in-strumental actor in promoting standards with,for example, their support for standardizationof human behavior. Scientific management re-ceived a boost because large businesses, afraidthat antitrust legislation would cripple them,considered novel means to become more cost-effective. When the railroad companies re-quested an increase in ticket rates, scientificmanagement proponents testified that theirmethods could have saved the railroads $1 mil-lion per day. The court ruled in their favor andhelped spread this form of standardization.

Standard creation has been streamlined bynational and international nongovernmentalstandard-setting organizations. Over time,especially in the United States, the powerof governmental standardizing agencies hasdeclined and the power of industry standard-setting agencies has grown. In the interwarperiod, the governmental National Bureau ofStandards gradually lost out to the engineeringumbrella organization the American Engineer-ing Standards Committee (AESC), made up oftrade associations, professional groups, privatecompanies, and government bureaus. TheAESC, reconstituted as the American Stan-dards Association, wrested jurisdiction from theNational Bureau of Standards and gave industrygreater control over standard-setting (Olshan1993). In 1944, the Allies set up a UnitedNations Standards Coordinating Committee,the predecessor of the International Organiza-tion for Standardization (ISO), to coordinatebetween national standards and to promotepostwar trade. Initially, the ISO issued recom-mendations, but in 1970 the ISO expanded itsjurisdiction by publishing international stan-dards to be adopted as national standards. The


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impetus for this development was an intensifiedinternational trade in goods and the resultantcompatibility problems due to outsourcingof components in different countries. Otherinternational organizations such as the WorldBank, the International Monetary Fund, theWorld Trade Organization, and the OECDhave insisted on the development or adoptionof standards by participants (Seidl 2007).

The American National Standards Insti-tute, ISO, and similar standard-making groupsfollow similar principles for the creation ofstandards. They promise optimal solutions torecurring technical problems in the name ofthe general public, based on consensus amongstakeholders with, in principle, voluntarycompliance (Higgins & Tamm Hallstrom2007). A sponsoring organization can thus callfor the creation of a standard, invite partners tocollaborate on the standard, and then dependon the standardizing organization to distributethe standard. The presence of such a standard-setting infrastructure leads to the proliferationof standards (Tamm Hallstrom 2004). Stan-dards are presumed to be in the public interest,but the public to whom standards apply isusually not directly represented in standardcreation (Berg et al. 2000, Biondi & Suzuki2007). Standardization by committee leads tocompromises, bitterly contested power plays,and negotiations. A participant with an exten-sive national tradition of standard creation,such as the British at ISO (Furusten 2000),can steer the content of standards. Similarly,a strong personality can influence the creationof standards, as seen in the role of a leadingpsychiatrist in the creation of the DSM-III(Kirk & Kutchins 1992). The composition ofstandard committees inevitably creates an insti-tutional bias, which may be less of an issue for,say, technical standards in telecommunications(Genschel 1997) but is more problematic for thecreation of medical treatment standards wheredrug companies sponsor the evidence and theresearch of committee members (Healy 2004).

Activist groups are one more constituencyto be considered in relation to standardcreation, as they have resisted or pressured

standardization efforts to obtain their objec-tives. In the regulation of genetically modifiedorganisms, public advocates in coalitionswith critical scientists and nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs) played a constitutiverole in more rigorous regulatory standardsusing existing standard-setting bodies ( Jasanoff2006). In the United States and Europe, criticalscientists and environmental activists wereable to link a controversial technology with acontested trade liberalization process to gen-erate publicity and political pressure (Murphyet al. 2006). Consumer activists in the 1980sobtained similar results fighting for morerigorous meat contamination standards in themidst of a public health crisis over “hamburgerdisease,” an outbreak of foodborne diseasestraced back to E. coli contamination in beefmeat ( Juska et al. 2000, p. 262).

Rather than lobbying in Brussels, Geneva, orWashington, DC, some activists have createdtheir own certification organizations. These en-tities, operating outside the state and with onlylimited input from industry, offer a seal of ap-proval after certification but confront questionsof legitimacy. When the environmental advo-cacy group the World Wildlife Fund helpedset up the Forest Stewardship Council with atripartite chamber consisting of environmental,social, and industry stakeholders, the forestindustry balked at the transparency of rulemak-ing and the inclusiveness of the organization.Taking the position that those who implementstandards and bear the cost of complianceshould set standards, they created competingstandard-setting organizations (Gulbrandsen2008). Under neoliberal policies in a global-izing economy, market and nonmarket actorsthus rely increasingly on standards to managereputations, make claims credible, and ratio-nalize competition, especially when traditionalforms of regulation (e.g., governmental) havebeen politically delegitimized (Bartley 2007).

Activists have also played an important rolein targeting one general form of standard-ization: the diverse and controversial set ofprojects that are directed at a “standard hu-man” (Czerniawski 2007; Epstein 2007, 2009;


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Igo 2007; Lengwiler 2009). Attempts to con-struct a standard human are unavoidable, in partbecause other standards have spillover effects.To standardize transportation is inevitably tostandardize the perceptions and tastes of trav-elers (Schivelbusch 1977); to standardize poli-cies is to standardize those administered bythem (Busch 2000). Thus, the creation of theDSM-III not only changed the classificationof psychiatric disorders but also standard-ized international drug development, third-party reimbursement, clinical research, and pa-tient identity across the globe (Lakoff 2005).Yet the assumption that human diversity canbe controlled for often has consequences thatare harmful to individuals—whether those arethe smaller people who are crushed by automo-bile air bags or the larger people who must crushthemselves into standard-sized airplane seats.

Biomedicine is one domain in whichconflicts over standardizing the human havebeen particularly acute in recent decades.Unlike scientists who work with nonhumanlaboratory animals, who in some cases haveliterally standardized animals for researchpurposes [see Kohler (1994) on the creationof the standard fruit fly], clinical researcherswho study and test drugs on human beingscannot actually reduce the variability inherentin the species. What they can do, however, ismake assumptions about when and whethersuch variability is medically relevant, as well asabout which individuals can best stand in forhumanity for purposes of medical testing. Bythe 1980s, in the United States, a broad arrayof health advocates had become concernedthat in practice the standard biomedical humanwas imagined as a white, middle-aged maleand that other groups were underrepresentedas subjects in biomedical experiments. Theresult, it was argued, was inadequate medicalknowledge about biological processes andabout the safety and efficacy of medicationsin women, racial and ethnic minorities,children, and the elderly. As Epstein (2007)describes, the “antistandardization resistancemovements” that opposed such practices haveproven successful in obtaining new policies

that mandate the inclusion of various groups assubjects in biomedical research and that call forthe measurement of outcome differences acrosscategories such as sex, race, ethnicity, and age.

The story is instructive in suggesting howthe creation of standards may become the ob-ject of controversy that spans professional andlay worlds. Yet it also makes clear the ulti-mate indispensability of standards to modernwork domains. New policies that promote med-ical inclusion not only established new standardoperating procedures for biomedical researchbut also authorized an alternative way of stan-dardizing the human. When advocates of theinclusion-and-difference paradigm repudiatedthe notion that humanity could be standardizedat the level of the species, they did not veer fullyto the opposite extreme of embracing total par-ticularity and the medical uniqueness of eachindividual. Rather, advocates proposed thatthe working units of biomedical knowledge-making could be groups—women, children,the elderly, Asian Americans, and so on—thatwere then defined in highly standardized ways.The new policies enshrine niche standardiza-tion (Epstein 2007, pp. 135–54): a way of trans-forming human populations into standardizedobjects available for scientific scrutiny, politicaladministration, marketing, or other purposesthat eschews both universalism and individual-ism and instead standardizes at the level of thesocial group—one standard for men, anotherfor women; one standard for blacks, anotherfor whites, another for Asians; and so on. Inplace of a standard human, niche standardiza-tion substitutes an intersecting set of standardhuman subtypes.

In sum, standard-setting is accomplishedby multiple parties, and standards can beimposed top-down or emerge by consensusamong stakeholders. The stakeholders caninvolve everyone affected by standards, but alarge proportion of standards have come fromthe area of industry and trade. Standards canbe field-specific, national, or international.Standard-setting is motivated by issues ofsafety, efficiency, or redistribution of resourcesbut may also reflect a strategy to become


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a market leader or to institute a regime ofself-regulation. However, unless efficiency orsafety is the explicit goal of standardization,any given actual standard is not necessarily thecheapest, most efficient, safest, scientificallymost reliable, or technically most advancedoutcome (think of the clumsiness of theQWERTY keyboard). Depending on the pro-cess of standard-setting, standards can implya lowest common denominator of availableoptions, the power of the strongest party instandardization, a negotiated order amongsome or all stakeholders, or a confirmation ofhow things are already done by most parties.Standardization has thus emerged as a formof regulation, and being part of the team thatsets standards can be a tremendous advantage.Yet the power of standardization depends onwhether standards are actually implemented.

IMPLEMENTATION OFSTANDARDS

“The nice thing about standards is that thereare so many to choose from” (Kelty 2008,p. 143). If many parties can and do create stan-dards to the point that the world is awash incompeting standards, standards risk remainingpaper tigers unless they are widely adopted.The voluntary nature of many standards makesit difficult to develop momentum unless built-in incentives promote compliance. We alreadyhave discussed some of those incentives: Gov-ernments may require adoption of standardsfor regulatory purposes, trade organizationsmay demand that manufacturers complywith production standards in order to sendtheir products across borders, environmentalorganizations may require compliance withstandards to obtain certification, manufacturersmay build standards into tools and products[statistical significance testing in sociology, forexample, diffused largely through its incorpo-ration in software programs (Leahey 2005)],and third parties may incentivize professionalstandards with payment schemes. The incen-tive may come from a crowd effect in whichnot following product standards becomes a

cost. Yet incentives alone do not guarantee thatstandards will be implemented and followed.

Every standard implies a “script” (Akrich1992) that specifies the various roles of users, aswell as their skills, motivations, requirements,tools, and final outcomes. At any point, any ofthese factors may not play out in the way thecreators of standards intended, and the stan-dard may fail or may morph into a new form.The smallest oversight can have devastatingconsequences—for example, the incompatibil-ity of metric and imperial systems led to theloss of a $125 million NASA Mars orbiter in1999. Additionally, every standard needs to beplugged into a physical and cultural infrastruc-ture that allows it to function. Following Latour(1988), in order for lab results to work outsidethe lab, the world has to be turned into a labo-ratory. This does not mean a completely con-trolled environment, but rather the transfer ofsufficient conditions for standards to thrive in avariety of settings. These settings, however, arealready populated by practices, tools, people,and other standards, some of which will not bespecified by the standard designers but never-theless need to be compatible with the new stan-dard (Timmermans & Berg 1997). Changingto a new standard will introduce uncertainty aswell as compatibility and switching costs, whichmay result in noncompliance (Storz 2007).

Metrology, the science of measurement, il-lustrates the amount of work required to makesure that the most elementary standards be-come and remain authoritative (Kula 1986).Once a consensus had been reached on how tomeasure electricity using the volt, ampere, andohm, hard work continued to keep the volt stan-dard. Rather than human opposition, the stan-dard volt faced physical resistance from materialsources that resist the transfer from one instru-ment to another. Many standard cells circulatearound the world:

The cell that holds the volt is itself held by abox with gold-plated terminals on the frontand climate control to maintain a constanttemperature within. Hand-carried transporta-tion is required for certain kinds of cells since


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they cannot be tipped more than 45◦ fromthe vertical. . . . Once the transport standardarrives, technicians whisk it through securityclearances, usher it into their laboratory, placeit next to some of their most expensive equip-ment, and prepare an oil bath at the volt’s fa-vorite temperature, marked in degrees Celsiuson the box. For up to four weeks the cell is al-lowed to settle into a laboratory. It is kept at aconstant temperature, freed from mechanicaldisturbance, measured regularly, and expectedto produce readings that are temporally con-stant, and which do not differ from local stan-dards (O’Connell 1993, p. 149).

Yet even connecting the volt to a measure-ment apparatus generates a slight resistance thatwill introduce voltage drop. Standard cells arelikely to maintain constant voltage if they areused as little as possible, limiting their util-ity as standards. Such standardization achievesauthority by translating consensual technicalspecifications into legally binding certificationmechanisms and embodying them in materialdevices combined with a continuous surveil-lance process (Mallard 1998). In this sense, theprocess of keeping standards universal is visu-alized as the creation of a massive network—itsown society—of circulating measures (Latour1988, O’Connell 1993).

To keep standards further on track, an aux-iliary support army of technicians, auditors,monitors, and consultants exist to implementand evaluate standards. The ubiquitous labelingthat identifies a company as ISO 9000 certifiedrefers to quality standards issued by the ISO in1987 aimed at building an infrastructure to in-tegrate firms and products on an internationallevel. The principle behind IS0 9000 is that anoptimal production structure with documenta-tion will result in high-quality products (TammHallstrom 2004). These broadly worded stan-dards have required intermediaries for inter-pretation, giving rise to consultants who canbuild up quality systems and other professionalswho can regularly certify compliance with thestandards. These consultants, in turn, requiretraining and conduct joint audits to calibrate

their evaluations (Higgins & Tamm Hallstrom2007).

If standards are voluntary, why bother withsupport staff? Standards are in principle volun-tary, but they can become de jure mandatory,producing a neoliberal government-industryhybrid of governance. National standardizingbodies have had cozy relationships with theirgovernments and have been sensitive to pol-icy implications of standards. In most instances,governments partially fund standard-setting or-ganizations and maintain memoranda of un-derstanding with the organizations. Standardsare integrated in governmental regulation andare often mandated or part of “gray-letter law”(Higgins & Tamm Hallstrom 2007). In thissense, standards created by NGOs enhance“neo-liberal rule at a distance” (Higgins &Tamm Hallstrom 2007, p. 698). Neoliberalismdepends largely on autonomous expert com-munities that translate government prioritiesinto a wide variety of locales and that pro-vide legitimacy (Rose 1999). Standard organi-zations promise technical expertise without po-litical entanglements. Yet such a technocraticgovernmentality without popular approval cre-ates a fragile authority, one that, because of theself-selection of experts and inevitable formal-ism, remains open to challenges of legitimacy(Tamm Hallstrom 2004).

When the implementation of standardsmoves from design to procedural issues, itbecomes all the more challenging to holda standard in ways that satisfy diverse, au-tonomous interests. The health care field isengaged in a massive standardization move-ment called evidence-based medicine wherebyprofessional organizations and regulatory enti-ties make the scientifically best evidence avail-able to clinicians in the form of meta-reviewsof the literature, practice guidelines, assess-ment tools, and standardized outcome mea-sures (Greenhalgh et al. 2008, Moreira 2007,Mykhalovskiy & Weir 2004, Timmermans &Berg 2003, Weisz et al. 2007). Yet theseguidelines have little effect on actual clini-cal decision making (McGlynn et al. 2003),and the field has focused on the problem


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of implementing guidelines (Grimshaw et al.2001).

Making standardized protocols work re-quires a close understanding of how cliniciansreach medical decisions. Studying depressiontreatment in primary care, Armstrong &Ogden (2006) found that clinicians conductedpersonalized clinical trials with individualpatients to check the effectiveness of new drugsand to match drugs with particular groups ofpatients and that clinicians remained attentiveto patient choice and their general relationshipwith patients. General practitioners also reliedon senior academic colleagues for the mostupdated information (Armstrong & Ogden2006). In a different study, clinicians reliedon tacit knowledge based on accumulatedexperience when awarding and interpretingstandardized outcome measures (Greenhalghet al. 2008). Oncologists switched betweenvarious standardized research protocols basedon the perceived needs of their patients ratherthan following one protocol for all patients(Berg 1997). Clinicians caring for diabetes pa-tients tweaked guidelines to coax responsibilitybased on needs and capacities of individualpatients (Lutfey & Freese 2007).

Should this continuous tinkering withprocedural standards be interpreted as a fatalstandard deviation that renders standard-ization of human behavior impossible? AsWittgenstein (1953) and ethnomethodologistshave noted (Heritage 1984), no rule canadequately capture the requisite work ofa prescribed action. On the ground, everystandard is simultaneously overdetermined andincomplete. To coordinate diverse interestsand activities, standards necessarily delegatesome residual work that requires active par-ticipation and submission of people to thestandard’s directives. Tinkering, repairing,subverting, or circumventing prescriptions ofthe standard are necessary to make standardswork (Lampland & Star 2009, p. 4; Star 1995,pp. 100–104). Thus, a recurring surprisingfinding is that loose standards with great adapt-ability may work better than rigidly definedstandards. Moreover, users often need to work

deliberately to save the standard from fallingapart under changing circumstances (Alder1998, de Laet & Mol 2000, Hogle 1995, Jordan& Lynch 1998). Yet flexibility may tip a stan-dard into uselessness. UNIX, an obvious choicefor a standard operating system in the 1980s,failed because it remained excessively flexible.So many designers worked on different versionsof the system that it lost its promise of compati-bility across computers (Kelty 2008). The trickin standardization appears to be to find a bal-ance between flexibility and rigidity and to trustusers with the right amount of agency to keepa standard sufficiently uniform for the task athand. In some settings, automation or incorpo-ration of a standard in other technologies helpspreserve the standard (Jordan & Lynch 1998).

Implementation of standards thus requiresembedding a standard with its script to coor-dinate disparate elements in societies alreadysaturated with countless routines and stan-dards (Berg 1997). Standardization is an active,time- and resource-intensive process. Depend-ing on the standard, building standard-basedsocieties may require integration on many dif-ferent levels: from national cultures with theirmoral orders to institutions with their conven-tions of work practices, organizations, and mul-tiple layers of technologies. Standards oftenrequire an auxiliary system that provides in-ternal or external incentives, audits, and cer-tification. Standards may fail implementationfor countless reasons, including lack of knowl-edge, lack of compliance, immediate conversionof standards, resistance, adaptation, or usurpa-tion. Very few standards work as intended bythe designers of standards because they are tin-kered with, whether slightly or fundamentally.It would be wrong to consider these standardsas failures because a standard’s flexibility is of-ten key to its success.

OUTCOMES

Countless standards do nothing. Some, how-ever, obtain majestic results. Take, for exam-ple, the gothic cathedral from Chartres. Thisimposing stone structure with, for its time,


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radically innovative flying buttresses, a towerof 115 m, and an overall length of 130 m wasbuilt between 1194 and 1230. Over this 36-year period, the construction was discontinu-ous depending on the weather and availabilityof resources and manpower. Builders lacked atheory of structural mechanics. There was nomaster architect or designer, and no originalplans of the cathedral survive. How, then, wasthe construction of the cathedral possible? Onematerial standard facilitating construction wasa template, “a pattern or mold, usually out-lined on a thin piece of wood, that a stone ma-son uses to cut a stone to a particular shape”(Turnbull 1991, p. 162). The template facili-tated mass production with only simple geo-metrical rules across large numbers of builderswith variable skill levels over time in a discon-tinuous building process (see also Alder 1998).

Even the standards that do not obtainanything materially may have an importantsignaling function. Measured by certification,the ISO 9000 standard is a success: In 2006,more than 775,000 firms had been certifiedworldwide (Storz 2007). Yet in spite of exten-sive auditing and consulting, many Japanesecompanies comply with the standard onlyformally, paying for the audit as a marketingmove but not changing management processesaccording to ISO principles. ISO 9000 certi-fication may have a strategic function even ifcompany officials consider it an “empty shell”(Storz 2007), just as rhetorically embracingevidence-based medicine in a country that lacksa working health care infrastructure may stillsignify a project of professional improvement(Geltzer 2009).

Besides signaling legitimacy in globaleconomies, standards have also proven enor-mously effective as dimensions of state-building. Standards extend what Mann (1993)refers to as the “infrastructural” power ofthe modern state: its capacity, for good orfor ill, to penetrate its territories and co-ordinate social life. Scott’s (1998) historicalaccount of how land, resources, and popu-lations became knowable entities that mod-ern states could administer is essentially a

history of multiple, overlapping processes ofstandardization:

How did the state gradually get a handleon its subjects and their environment? Sud-denly, processes as disparate as the creationof permanent last names, the standardizationof weights and measures, the establishmentof cadastral surveys and population registers,[and] the standardization of language and le-gal discourse . . . seemed comprehensible as at-tempts at legibility and simplification. In eachcase, officials took exceptionally complex, il-legible, and local social practices, such as landtenure customs or naming customs, and cre-ated a standard grid whereby it could be cen-trally recorded and monitored (Scott 1998,p. 2).

Similarly, Curtis (1998) has described howmetrological standardization both depends onsovereign state power and extends the adminis-trative capacities of the state, although he alsoemphasizes the persistence of local diversity andhybrid forms of measurement. Such processesof state-building via standardization have beenquite successful in consolidating bureaucraticrule, even if, in Scott’s analysis, they often pavedthe way for large-scale disasters of centralizedplanning, the regrettable loss of useful localknowledge, or the problematic construal of thesubjects of state rule as “standardized citizens”who were “uniform in their needs and even in-terchangeable” (Scott 1998, p. 346).

Standardization thus often seems inimical toforms of political organization that valorize lo-cal rule and respect difference. Yet it is also easyto see how standardization can promote democ-racy precisely because standardized processesare often more transparent in ways that areconsistent with accountability. Similarly, stan-dardization at times can be a tremendous boonto grassroots organizing campaigns that pro-mote the power of ordinary individuals to con-trol their lives. For example, when, in the early2000s, health activists in South Africa sought todisseminate antiretroviral drugs to people withHIV infection, they confronted the prejudicial


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belief that the uneducated inhabitants of poorcountries could not be counted on to maintaina vigilant adherence to multidrug treatment.However, physicians from the advocacy groupDoctors Without Borders, working togetherwith local AIDS activists, not only challengedsuch views but also declared that the knowl-edge required to make antiretroviral therapyfunction “could be condensed into simple codesand distributed among nurses, laypeople, and[patients] themselves” (Steinberg 2008, p. 84).The packaging of antiretrovirals as a simple,standardized, and transportable technology wasthen symbolized concretely by the distributionof thousands of plastic pillboxes, their 14 com-partments labeled Sunday through Saturday,morning and evening. This example remindsus not only that standardization at times canlead to the betterment of life and health, butalso that it has no fixed political valences andcan promote diverse interests, both autocraticand democratic.

By coordinating people and things in newconfigurations, standards transform, and theiroutcome is a transformed world. They may al-low the consistent coordination of people andthings in ways that would be difficult to achieveon an ad hoc basis, they may allow communi-cation between incompatible systems, and theymay create specific kinds of mobility, unifor-mity, precision, objectivity, universality, andcalculability. The most consistent complaintabout standardization is that it leads to a worldof gray sameness, a technical dehumanizationexemplified by Taylorism. Yet Taylor’s sci-entific management did not revolutionize theworkplace because workers rejected time man-agement and engaged in pacing to “express theirsolidarity and their hostility to management”(Noble 1984, p. 33). This is not to say that stan-dardization always preserves preexisting diver-sity and leads to humanization for all humans;in fact, every standard necessarily elevates somevalues, things, or people at the expense of oth-ers, and this boundary-setting can be used as aweapon of exclusion (Baines 2006, Bowker &Star 1999).

If blanket dehumanization is one perceivedextreme outcome of standardization, at theother extreme is the view that standardizationnecessarily facilitates a global economy. Con-sidering the political alternatives, standardiza-tion in its common voluntary neoliberal guiseis a rather powerless and ineffective means ofinternational regulation that is often heavilycontested and that struggles for legitimacy andauthority (Tamm Hallstrom 2004). Indeed,standardization is referred to as “soft regula-tion” (Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000) that impliesfew effective coercive mechanisms unless thirdparties step up to enforce standards (Hulsse& Kerwer 2007). International standards canfacilitate trade by lowering national standards(Abraham & Reed 2002), or they can createtrade barriers by raising standards (Murphyet al. 2006) or by imposing irrelevant standards(Storz 2007).

Somewhere between glorified globaliza-tion and dark dehumanization, each standardachieves some small or large transformationof an existing social order. Again, the speci-ficity of the actual standard matters: Differ-ent standards will generate different outcomesfor different users. Standards may simplify lifeby cutting down on the number of alternativecourses of action but allow for greater com-plexity within the preferred actions. Because ofthe local work needed to implement standards,the uniformity achieved through standardiza-tion necessarily carries traces of the local set-tings. Yet other local elements will be erasedthrough standardization. Once standards areestablished, they render invisible the work re-quired to make them possible and the uncer-tainty and ad hoc tinkering that accompaniedstandard implementation. The power of stan-dardization lies exactly in how such local erasureallows new manipulations to take place such ascalculation and commodification. Thus, we canregret the loss of life’s social diversity, includ-ing multiple salient socially situated identities,when pathologists pin a cause of death downto a physiological process, but such causes ofdeath form the basis of population mortality


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tables and help set public health, legal, and so-cial policies (Timmermans & Almeling 2009).Even when mapping such transformations,however, it is crucial to highlight how everystandard inevitably implies an evaluation at theexpense of some other, and often obfuscated,devaluation (Thevenot 2009).

What we can conclude with certainty is thatstandards do not lead to a standardized worldin the colloquial sense of a uniform world. De-spite an ever-widening scope of design, termi-nological, performance, and procedural stan-dards and the existence of standardized patients(Wallace 1995), standardized soldiers (Gray2003), or even a standardized human, the trans-formations that standards obtain are rarely en-during. Standards can stabilize some actions ina moving world, but when the world aroundthe standard changes, the standard will quicklybecome outdated or altered as well.

In sum, although many if not most stan-dards never catch on, standards still transformthe world as we know it. Standards obtain re-sults in all aspects of modern life from signal-ing trade credentials to nation-building withina broad area of political regimens. Standardstransform by coordinating disparate elements,but the outcomes that standards achieve dependon the specific standards and the circumstancesunder which they are made to work. Theyrarely exclusively dehumanize but will necessar-ily have some dehumanizing consequences sim-ply because one person’s much needed standardcauses another person’s suffering (Star 1991).Standards also rarely harmonize or globalize,but each standard, in its own specific way, canbring some of these goals closer.

CONCLUSION

We coexist in a world filled with standardsbut not in a standard world. Standards andstandardization are such widespread and om-nipresent features of modernity that, ironically,their precise sociological significance standsat risk of vanishing out of sight. Rather thanmaking any totalizing claims about the natureor effects of these phenomena, we argue that

their sociological import comes out most clearlythrough scholarship that is specific, empirical,and located in concrete social settings. Insteadof linking standardization to any overarchinghistorical trajectory (such as a tendency to-ward global social homogeneity), we argue for adifferentiated and symmetrical approach thatinvestigates the full spectrum of positive andnegative consequences of standardization. Weemphasize the variety of ways in which stan-dards and standardization undergird diverse so-cial, cultural, political, and economic endeav-ors, as well as the equally varied implication forthe well-being and suffering of individuals andsocial groups. With those premises in mind, wehave reviewed the deep entrenchment of thetopics of standards and standardization withinsociological work going back all the way to theemergence of the discipline.

Many sorts of scholars have studied stan-dards and standardization, but sociologists havean important and distinctive contribution tomake to such work. Sociologists are attentive tothe complex political configurations that pro-mote standards, just as they are well positionedto study the politics of resistance to standards.Through a close empirical focus on outcomes,sociologists can also follow the path of the col-lateral damage that standardization may causefor those who defy standardization, as well astrace the ironies of unintended consequences.If standardization is a soft form of regulation(Brunsson & Jacobsson 2000), it can also beviewed as a soft form of stratification, employedby myriad stakeholders to elevate some at theexpense of others. Yet such stratification can-not simply be assumed from the presence ofstandards. Standardization is an active processthat aspires to stability and order. Any order isa hard-won achievement that requires the sub-mission of diverse actors. Standardization con-sists of building a society around a standard withan implied script that brings people and thingstogether in a world already full of competingconventions and standards.

Just as a sociology of standards can make animportant contribution to the interdisciplinarystudy of standards, so sociologists who work on


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any of a wide array of other topics would findtheir efforts enhanced by viewing their topicthrough the lens of a sociology of standards.Clearly, the study of standards is important tosubfields of sociology that deal with issues ofeconomic activity, scientific and professionalpractices, and knowledge and expertise. But theintersection with sociological topics is muchbroader than that. Sociologists of race and eth-nicity, for example, are necessarily concernedwith the politics of standardization of racialand ethnic categories by federal agencies (Omi1997), and urban sociologists would likelybenefit from understanding the standardiza-tion of methods of credit scoring that underliebank lending practices (Poon 2010). Moregenerally, sociologists who study standards inany single domain stand to enrich their work by

understanding how standards operate else-where. Although there is no single sociologicalstory to be told about standards, there is stillmuch to be learned by juxtaposing scholarshipon standards across multiple arenas of social life.

Standards’ ubiquity gives them an obviouscharacter, but it is exactly this obviousness thatsociologists should critically interrogate. Just asthe choice of one standard over another signalsa preference for a specific logic and set of pri-orities, so the choice of standards of any sortimplies one way of regulating and coordinatingsocial life at the expense of alternative modes.When examining the emergence of standardsin new and varied domains, sociologists need toask how social life became organized throughthese specific standards as well as how it couldhave been done differently.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings thatmight be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

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SO36-FM ARI 2 June 2010 4:38

Annual Reviewof Sociology

Volume 36, 2010Contents

FrontispieceJohn W. Meyer � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � xiv

Prefatory Chapter

World Society, Institutional Theories, and the ActorJohn W. Meyer � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 1

Theory and Methods

Causal Inference in Sociological ResearchMarkus Gangl � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �21

Causal Mechanisms in the Social SciencesPeter Hedstrom and Petri Ylikoski � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �49

Social Processes

A World of Standards but not a Standard World: Toward a Sociologyof Standards and StandardizationStefan Timmermans and Steven Epstein � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �69

Dynamics of Dyads in Social Networks: Assortative, Relational,and Proximity MechanismsMark T. Rivera, Sara B. Soderstrom, and Brian Uzzi � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � �91

From the Sociology of Intellectuals to the Sociology of InterventionsGil Eyal and Larissa Buchholz � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 117

Social Relationships and Health Behavior Across the Life CourseDebra Umberson, Robert Crosnoe, and Corinne Reczek � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 139

Partiality of Memberships in Categories and AudiencesMichael T. Hannan � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 159

v

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SO36-FM ARI 2 June 2010 4:38

Institutions and Culture

What Is Sociological about Music?William G. Roy and Timothy J. Dowd � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 183

Cultural Holes: Beyond Relationality in Social Networks and CultureMark A. Pachucki and Ronald L. Breiger � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 205

Formal Organizations

Organizational Approaches to Inequality: Inertia, Relative Power,and EnvironmentsKevin Stainback, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, and Sheryl Skaggs � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 225

Political and Economic Sociology

The Contentiousness of Markets: Politics, Social Movements,and Institutional Change in MarketsBrayden G King and Nicholas A. Pearce � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 249

Conservative and Right-Wing MovementsKathleen M. Blee and Kimberly A. Creasap � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 269

The Political Consequences of Social MovementsEdwin Amenta, Neal Caren, Elizabeth Chiarello, and Yang Su � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 287

Comparative Analyses of Public Attitudes Toward Immigrantsand Immigration Using Multinational Survey Data: A Reviewof Theories and ResearchAlin M. Ceobanu and Xavier Escandell � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 309

Differentiation and Stratification

Income Inequality: New Trends and Research DirectionsLeslie McCall and Christine Percheski � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 329

Socioeconomic Disparities in Health BehaviorsFred C. Pampel, Patrick M. Krueger, and Justin T. Denney � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 349

Gender and Health InequalityJen’nan Ghazal Read and Bridget K. Gorman � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 371

Incarceration and StratificationSara Wakefield and Christopher Uggen � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 387

Achievement Inequality and the Institutional Structure of EducationalSystems: A Comparative PerspectiveHerman G. Van de Werfhorst and Jonathan J.B. Mijs � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 407

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Historical Studies of Social Mobility and StratificationMarco H.D. van Leeuwen and Ineke Maas � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 429

Individual and Society

Race and TrustSandra Susan Smith � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 453

Three Faces of IdentityTimothy J. Owens, Dawn T. Robinson, and Lynn Smith-Lovin � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 477

Policy

The New Homelessness RevisitedBarrett A. Lee, Kimberly A. Tyler, and James D. Wright � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 501

The Decline of Cash Welfare and Implications for Social Policyand PovertySandra K. Danziger � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 523

Indexes

Cumulative Index of Contributing Authors, Volumes 27–36 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 547

Cumulative Index of Chapter Titles, Volumes 27–36 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 551

Errata

An online log of corrections to Annual Review of Sociology articles may be found athttp://soc.annualreviews.org/errata.shtml

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A World of Standards but not a Standard World: Toward a … · 2017-09-26 · modern world equivalent across cultures, time, and geography. Standardization may seem to be politically

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