Academic Identity
I am assistant professor of Sociology at Barnard College. My book (and my dissertation research) is a comparative study of technology and futures trading, an ethnography of open outcry and electronic traders. My current research is on how art specialists price cultural commodities, particularly how categories and commensuration work in the secondary/resale fine arts market. I teach courses in economic sociology, organizations, and gender.
Professional Identity
I occasionally consult, focusing on organizational change, the future of technology and financial markets, and environmental markets. I do strategic assessments of markets, technology and organizational design, with qualitative and quantitative components. If you are interested, please email me.
Personal Identity
I grew up outside Chicago, and went to school(s) at Wesleyan University, USC, and Northwestern University. I currently live in New York, with a partner who is a marketing manager for an educational nonprofit. I love movies, like to cook, and I can do a mean lindy swing out. I am INTP.
March 23, 2005
Commensuration
Filed under: Daily — Peter @ 3:27 am
I had an interesting discussion this morning, with a colleague from across town. The topic was commensuration, a concept that we both have been interested in for some time (actually, our intellectual ‘pedigree’ is fairly similar, and I should say with some amount of grace that I’ve leaned on his insights more than he on mine).
Commensuration is the process by which qualitatively different objects are brought into tension via a common metric. For instance, how do we compare Barnard College, a women’s college in New York City, institutionally affiliated with but distinct from Columbia University, with Spelman College, a historically-Black women’s college, historically affiliated but distinct from Morehouse College in Atlanta? Do we just say that they are different? Well, maybe. But we can compare them along a number of lines: academic reputation, size, what students do when they graduate, region, etc.
When these comparison categories are ordinal, that is, they are meaningfully rank-able, this is what we mean by commensuration. Commensuration draws different qualities into tension and transforms them into quantitative difference. Region may make the schools comparable, but not commensurable; class size, percentage of PhD’s teaching courses, reputation, rank - these make the schools commensurable.
Why does this matter? Commensuration has potentially powerful effects, sometimes transformational ones. More on this later.
One Response to “Commensuration”
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This site is hand-woven, and heavily borrows from the wonderful blueprint framwork. Rock on, grids!
Not quite
, but getting there..
April 28th, 2005 at 6:47 am
transvaluation is a parallel concept with a slightly longer pedigree(or so i think) … it is how things become ordinal.