Abstract
The sociologies of quantification, university rankings, and infrastructure are a loosely connected set of scholarly endeavors. Research in these areas typically examines production of certain types of quantification, their effects, and institutionalization. Despite these commonalities, scholars have noted a lack of conceptual coherence, debates on how to study quantification, a need to examine their socio-epistemological prerequisites, and research that crosses organization and national boundaries. In this paper, I argue that institutional ethnography—an alternative sociology for people—provides a unifying ontology for the sociology of quantification and studies of rankings and metrics in higher education. Institutional ethnography examines socio-epistemological prerequisites of quantification and facilitates a collaborative transnational project due to its focus on the extra local coordination of action. I also share results of the first transnational institutional ethnography of university rankings and related metrics, demonstrating coordinated action across several junctures of what has been called a global university ranking surveillance assemblage.
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Notes
One of my first steps toward understanding rankings was to conduct a news media search through a library database. I read 600 articles. I also subscribed to RSS feeds and daily newsletters on rankings and higher education.
Thomson Reuters has since sold its academic data division to Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia for US$3.55 billion (Thomson Reuters, 2016a), Clarivate Analytics now operates this data-related business.
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Research on which this paper is based was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Barron, G.R.S. How university rankings are made through globally coordinated action: a transnational institutional ethnography in the sociology of quantification. High Educ 86, 809–826 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00903-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00903-y