The politics of calculation
But what of the specific relation between politics, technology and the economy? In what way can the organisation and operation of markets either become a political matter, or be prevented from becoming so? And what role does scientific and technical calculation have in these processes?
A starting point for thinking about these issues is the opposition, which is often drawn by sociologists, between calculation and politics.
In sociology, from Weber onwards, calculation is often regarded as an essentially anti-political instrument, in the sense used here. Calculation is thought to reduce the space of the political and to limit the possibility for disagreement. When situations become calculable it is taken to indicate the fact that political contestation has ended. There is something of this argument in The Laws of the Markets, although it is reformulated in terms of the concept of framing. A situation becomes calculable, according to Callon, when it has become framed. “No calculation is possible without this framing which allowsone to provide a clear list of the entities, states of the world, possible actions and expected outcomes of these actions” (Callon 1998: 19). The performance of calculation and the formation of calculable agents depend on the existence of a frame. But how does this occur? How are situations framed, such that calculation becomes possible at all?
Consider one example - the measurement of urban pollution caused by cars. Pollution typically takes the form of what Callon calls an overflow (Callon 1998: 250-5). It frequently exists outside of the frame of normal economic calculation. All the effects of a car purchase on noise, the safety of children, on local levels of carbon monoxide and ozone, and on global warming, are simply not taken into account when a car is purchased - or at least they are unlikely to be consciously taken into account in the transaction between the buyer and seller.
However, this situation may change once a local authority places pollution monitoring devices next to the road, and car drivers are fined for driving polluting cars.11 The frame can shift. The possibility of being fined might begin to affect the driver’s calculations about what car she drives and to what extent she keeps it in a good state of repair. In being made visible through measurement and through the operation of the law, it is hoped that pollution will enter into the frame of the car driver’s decisions. She might choose to buy a car which uses a cleaner fuel, or has lower emissions, or abandon the car altogether. Likewise, the environmental costs of motoring might enter into the manufacturers’ calculations as well - as governments - receiving more and more negative environmental information from the streets - raise fuel taxes and create tax differentials between more and less polluting forms of fuel and more or less fuel efficient vehicles. Through measurement, overflows become calculable. The costs of such overflows become factored into specific economic transactions, in ways that the immediate participants may not always be aware.
This is a version of the old sociological story about rationalisation. Through measurement, a whole range of objects and problems become brought into the frame of economic calculation. In this way, scientific measurement and economic calculation have largely anti-political, but arguably beneficial, effects. Calculation increases reflexivity about the organisation of the market, but it also effects a reduction in the potential space of political conflict. When they meet in the showroom, the car buyer and the car seller do not enter into a heated controversy about the politics of global warming or the effects of cars on the health of schoolchildren or on asthma sufferers. In various ways these have already been made calculable by others - working in Whitehall, Brussels and in laboratories in Paris and Munich.
The political differences and moral dilemmas of car buyers have been partially resolved elsewhere. Those involved in the market do not worry about morality or politics, not because they are immoral or apolitical, but because enormous efforts have been made to make morality and politics calculable, and make them happen in other places. The use of measurement, in combination with regulation, policing and the law serve to reduce the possibility of political conflict over the purchase and use of cars.The impressive efforts to measure urban air pollution are indicative of a broader
The anti-political economy 89 trend. Recent years have witnessed increasing activity on the part of government, consumer and environmental groups and standardisation bodies to monitor the properties and effects of technical practices. A vast number of engineers and natural and social scientists are engaged not in research but in the business of measuring and monitoring properties.12 Such measurement activities are conducted for the purposes of environmental monitoring, quality control and assurance, market regulation or consumer advice. At the same time, in more or less rigorous ways, consumers themselves are involved in this enterprise. Increasingly, in the interest of environmental protection and fuel economy, individuals and families have themselves been encouraged to monitor their use of technology and have been given the information to do so.13
Callon and his colleagues have spoken of an economy of qualities in which the measurement of properties becomes increasingly important (Callon et al., this volume). This idea can be extended. It is possible to talk today of a government of qualities, and of the critical role of various levels of government in both fostering and extending this economy and in funding and regulating what I would call metrological regimes.14 In the UK, the garage mechanic who performs the MoT test on the car, to see if its exhaust emissions meet national and European standards, is a typical member of a metrological regime.15 The mechanic’s practices have the effect of translating a particular framing of a political debate (about pollution) into the economic field. In a mediated form, his metrological work also plays a critical role in the calculations of buyers and sellers concerning the value of the car. In this way, politics and the market are connected to each other, but political confrontation does not come to interfere with market transactions.16