期刊名称：tripleC : Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society
印刷版ISSN：1726-670X
出版年度：2020
卷号：18
期号：1
页码：429-443
DOI：10.31269/triplec.v18i1.1121
出版社：University of Salzburg
摘要：Econometric data are used to produce authoritative facts about the world. Yet, as numbers enjoy a central place in modern reasoning (particularly in government as their presumed objectivity and neutrality assist impartial decision-making), it is important that they receive scrutiny. Using methodological techniques from Western Marxism, with special reference to the work of Lukács, Horkheimer and Adorno, and Marcuse to inform a critique of Acemoglu and Robinson, I argue that the historical emergence of econometrics as a mode of mediated knowledge is a reified practice within the broader technical administration of social life, a practice that is not a transparent representation of social phenomena. This is because when econometrics transforms the thing being measured into a statistical indicator it eclipses political disputes with technical disputes, sidestepping good faith democratic deliberation about what goods are worth pursuing. Effectively, one-dimensional thought cannot perceive the origins of items put into circulation and so ideology is produced – what seems value-free is value-laden.
