How Quantification Shapes What We See in Organizations and Social Movements: Three Examples of Visibility and Invisibility

In this talk I examine how quantification constructs relations of visibility: How what we attend to and ignore is mediated by numbers. The forms of visibility, invisibility (and everything in between) that numbers produce can reinforce or redress inequalities, shape political processes, and help to forge or threaten group identities. Drawing on examples from different institutional spheres—educational rankings, LGBTQ politics in the U.S., and political polling in recent U.S. presidential races, I discuss how the forms of legibility and obscurity, and the type of comparisons that numbers generate, can deeply influence where organizations invest, how they understand each other, and how groups decide, predict and protest. I call for greater, more systematic scholarly attention to the dimensions and relations of quantitative visibility as an important theoretical concept, and to the conditions the shape its effects, for those who study quantification and organizations.