Lawrence Busch, "Standards: Recipes for Reality"
The MI..T Pr.ss | 2011 | ISBN: 0262016389 | 408 pages | PDF | 2,7 MB
Standards
are the means by which we construct realities. There are established
standards for professional accreditation, the environment, consumer
products, animal welfare, the acceptable stress for highway bridges,
healthcare, education--for almost everything. We are surrounded by a
vast array of standards, many of which we take for granted but each of
which has been and continues to be the subject of intense negotiation.
In this book, Lawrence Busch investigates standards as "recipes for
reality." Standards, he argues, shape not only the physical world around
us but also our social lives and even our selves. Busch shows how
standards are intimately connected to power--that they often serve to
empower some and disempower others. He outlines the history of formal
standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with
the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and
things. He examines the use of standards to differentiate and how this
affects our perceptions; he discusses the creation of a global system of
audits, certifications, and accreditations; and he considers issues of
trust, honesty, and risk. After exploring the troubled coexistence of
standards and democracy, Busch suggests guidelines for developing fair,
equitable, and effective standards. Taking a uniquely integrated and
comprehensive view of the subject, Busch shows how standards for people
and things are inextricably linked, how standards are always layered
(even if often addressed serially), and how standards are simultaneously
technical, social, moral, legal, and ontological devices.
