Lecture on January 10, 2023
Scores as Status Marker. On the Quantification of the Social
Steffen Mau (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
About the lecture [poster]
Please note: The lecture had to be cancelled and is postponed to winter term 2023/24. We will keep you updated at uhh.de/inf-eit.
This presentation starts form the observation that there is an increased use of scorings for the evaluation and classification of people and asks for their role in allocating status, the distribution of life chances and the generation of inequalities. Starting with a general definition and typology of scorings it looks into the question how algorithmic scorings operate as indicators and generators of status. The article engages with the paradigms of differentiation (Nassehi) and the singularization theory (Reckwitz) in order to show how the inequality aspects feature within these theoretical contributions and argues that it needs an inequality-specific framework to capture the status implications of scorings. The rise of algorithmic scorings goes hand in hand with new forms of “investive data-work”. Building on this, the presentation distinguishes different modes and discusses pertinent inequality effects of scorings.
About the speaker
Steffen Mau is Professor of Macrosociology at Humboldt University Berlin. He received his diploma from the Free University Berlin and his PhD from the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence. He was member of the Council of the German Council of Science and Humanities and is member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Science. Recent publications are: The Metric Society. On the Quantification of the Social (2019, Cambridge: Polity); Lütten Klein. Leben in der ostdeutschen Transformationsgesellschaft (2019, Berlin: Suhrkamp); Sorting Machines. The re-invention of borders in the 21st century (2022, Cambridge: Polity).
photo: Marten Körner
Please note: The lecture had to be cancelled and is postponed to winter term 2023/24. We will keep you updated at uhh.de/inf-eit.