Department Colloquium featuring speaker: C. Thi Nguyen (Utah)
November 15, 2024
2306 Mason Hall, 3-5 PM

Title: The Social Function of Scoring Systems: Convergence Through Mechanicity

Abstract: Scoring systems are social systems that function to produce convergence on a singular verdict. Games and institutions often use one particular type: a mechanical scoring systems. A game tells us exactly what gets us points; a bureaucracy tells us exactly how our productivity will be measured. Strangely, these mechanical scoring systems often inspire fun and free play in games – but in institutional life, they drain the life out of everything. Why? Drawing from Lorraine Daston’s work on rules, I offer a theory of the mechanical. A mechanical procedure is one where the procedures and criteria have been designed so as to be usable by anybody, to yield consistent results. Mechanical scoring systems perform a valuable social function: they guarantee convergence of evaluations, from those who have accepted the scoring system. They eliminate the possibility of disagreement among those who have agreed to abide by the scoring rules. To do this, however, such scoring systems need to strictly limit the kinds of criteria they can target. In games, this can help us to become more fluid. But mechanical scoring systems perform a different function in institutions. Mechanical scoring systems are often used to make workers more replaceable. The demand for worker fungibility thus systematically shapes the kinds of targets and goals that can be enshrined in institutions. This opens the door for a kind of hermeneutical feedback loop, whereby those agents who are willing to sacrifice all else, in the pursuit of higher mechanical scores, are rewarded with greater social power, with they can use to heighten the social power of mechanical scoring systems.