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The ant i-polit icaleconomyAndrew Barry

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To cit e this art icle: Andrew Barry (2002): The anti-political economy,Economy and Society, 31:2, 268-284

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D o w n l o a d e d b y [ R

u t g e r s U n i v e r s i t y ] a t 0

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The anti-political economy

Andrew Barry

Abstract

This paper develops Michel Callon’s analysis of the technological economy in twoways. First, the paper is concerned with the way that political activity is framedthrough the use of a variety of technical devices. Arguing against the view that politicscan be located in all forms of social and economic activity, the paper suggests thatpolitics should be regarded as a rather specialist activity that is often directed towards‘anti-political’ ends. Second, through a discussion of what the paper terms ‘thefragility of metrological regimes’ and the ‘inventiveness of measurement’, the paper

argues that measurement and calculation can have the effect of disrupting the frameof politics, and creating a conduit for the cross-contamination of the economic andthe political.

Keywords: politics; anti-politics; technology; events; metrology; regulation.

The political and the anti-political

In The Laws of the Markets, Michel Callon refrains from any explicit discussionof politics. Yet, particularly in the nal chapter of the book, it seems that a con-sideration of politics is at the centre of his concerns. In this chapter, in a dis-cussion of framing and overowing he speaks of a distinction between cold andhot negotiations. In cold negotiations, agreement regarding overows is easilyarrived at. ‘The possible world states are already known or easy to identify:calculated decisions can be taken’ (Callon 1998: 261). By contrast, in hot nego-tiations everything is up for grabs. Particular agencies may try to make calcu-

lations, but the basis for those calculations may be radically called into question(ibid.: 260). Today, hot negotiations proliferate. He cites BSE as an example.

Let us begin with a very conventional denition of politics. We can takepolitics to refer to all those kinds of institutions, agencies and practices broadlyassociated with international, national and local government. In thinking aboutpolitics in this sense, the perspective adopted in The Laws of the Markets offers

Copyright © 2002 Taylor & Francis LtdISSN 0308-5147 print/1469-5766 onlineDOI: 10.1080/03085140220123162

Economy and Society Volume 31 Number 2 May 2002: 268–284

Andrew Barry, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths College, Lewisham Way, London SE

14 6NW.Tel: 020 7919 7728. E-mail: [email protected]



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a good starting point. Callon argues that the discipline of economics tends toforget that the formation of markets is a technical matter, requiring extraordi-nary investments in the law, technology, architecture, accountancy and, some-

times, economics. Likewise, political scientists tend to forget the remarkabletechnicality of politics. Devices such as press conferences, parliamentarydebates, public demonstrations, public opinion polls, political analyses, electoralregisters and so on are not incidental to politics. They play a critical role inmaking it possible for politicians, trade unionists, activists, lobbyists and citizensto act as political agents. The political actor does not come isolated into thepolitical arena any more than the consumer comes isolated into the marketplace.He or she comes with a whole array of material devices and forms of knowledge

which serve to frame political action. There is a physics to politics.1Consider the question of the capacity of persons to act as voters. The design,distribution and counting of ballot papers requires constant and substantialinvestments. The frame of representative democracy breaks down when theseinvestments are not properly made, and the frame made secure; when questionscan be raised about the marks made on ballot papers, registration of voters andthe distribution of polling booths. In this context, we should push the analogybetween voting and market transactions. Doubtless the voter is thoroughly

entangled in his or her social world. He or she receives advice from many direc-tions: friends, television, politicians and so on. But, as in a market, in votingthere is disentanglement. Representative democracy is just as different from aculture of permanent political activity as a market economy is different from onebased on the exchange of gifts. It makes no demands on the citizen once theelection has ended. After the vote is cast, the mark of the vote itself does notbear (or should not bear) any visible trace of the complexity of the voter’s invest-ments in the process or its outcome. Once the choice is made, the vote becomesdetached from its entanglement in a particular place, time and personal experi-ence. It is rare, as the case of American presidential election of 2000 demon-strates, that this framing is challenged and disintegrates as each technicalcomponent is scrutinized.2

Such a perspective – on the technology of politics – does indicate limitationsto those accounts of politics that view politics primarily in terms of strugglesand negotiations between classes, interests and movements (as is normal in

political sociology). It is also suggestive of the weaknesses of those accounts of politics that focus on questions of identity and discourse at the expense of ananalysis of the technical and institutional forms which politics takes.3 It pointsto the fact that politics, as conventionally understood, is actually a ratherspecialist activity, which is associated with particular techniques and practices.Sociology has tended to want to nd politics in everything, including in the dis-course of economics. But it should not be forgotten that there is a specicity topolitics. Max Weber’s sense of the importance of considering the particular

characteristics of politics as a vocation has often been forgotten in the effort toexpand our sense of politics.4

Nonetheless, focusing on the technology of politics makes politics too much

Andrew Barry: The anti-political economy 269



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of a technical and instrumental matter. The Foucauldian analysis of technolo-gies of government seems to fall into this trap.5 Politics, after all, is both aboutcontestation, and the containment of contestation. It is about the possibility of

governing and about questioning and disrupting the conditions for govern-ment.6 It is about conict, negotiation and the resolution of conict. For govern-ment to be possible it is necessary to reach common decisions, however arbitrary,negotiated and provisional such decisions are. The fact that such commondecisions have to be arrived at in the face of persisting disagreement and in theabsence of ‘rational’ justication is one of the persisting circumstances of politics. Jeremy Waldron makes the point succinctly:

The prospect of persisting disagreement must be regarded, I think, as one of the elementary conditions of modern politics. Nothing we can say aboutpolitics makes much sense if we proceed without taking this condition intoaccount. We may say . . . that disagreement among citizens as to what theyshould do, as a political body, is one of the circumstances of politics. It is notall there is to the circumstances of politics, of course: there is also the needto act together, even though we disagree about what we do . . . the circum-stances of politics are a coupled pair: disagreement wouldn’t matter if people

didn’t prefer a common decision; and the need for a common decision wouldnot give rise to politics as we know it if there wasn’t at least the potential fordisagreement about what the common decision would be.

(Waldron 1999: 153–4)7

In this context, it is useful to make a distinction between politics – as a set of technical practices, forms of knowledge and institutions – and the political as anindex of the space of disagreement. An action is political, in this latter sense, tothe extent it opens up the possibility for disagreement. Political disagreementswill, in general, take established forms and occur between clearly identiablepolitical actors and positions. Yet the conduct of specic actions may havepolitical effects precisely in so far as they cannot be understood in the con-ventional terms of political discourse. Georgio Agamben, for example, has dis-cussed the way in which the events of Tiananmen Square had politicalconsequences not because they were a reection or articulation a particularpolitical interest or ideology but precisely in so far they subverted the frame

within which politics was conventionally understood in China (Agamben 1993:84–6). In a different context, Vololona Rabeharisoa and Michel Callon havestudied the new forms of association between patients’ groups and scientistswhich disrupt the boundaries which have conventionally existed betweenexperts and publics (Rabeharisoa and Callon 1999; Callon 1999a).

Seen in these terms what is commonly termed politics is not necessarily – orgenerally – political in its consequences. Politics can often be profoundly anti-political in its effects: suppressing potential spaces of contestation; placing limits

on the possibilities for debate and confrontation. Indeed, one might say that oneof the core functions of politics has been, and should be, to place limits on thepolitical. Politicians, officials and activists have developed a remarkable set of

270 Economy and Society



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skills in containing and channelling the form and direction of political dis-agreement. Such skills, in using available institutional procedures, in holdingpublic inquiries, in maintaining organizational or party discipline, in under-

standing how to draw up legislation, in using the possibilities for patronage anddeveloping voting procedures, in creating arrangements where consensus can bereached and in managing the press and public relations and so on, are oftenextraordinarily technical. Just as we might investigate the place played by econ-omics, marketing and accountancy in the formation of markets, so too we mightconsider the importance of political science, political theory and public opinionresearch in justifying and informing the conduct of anti-politics and reproduc-ing particular forms of anti-political action.8

To recognize that a lot of politics (and much political theory and philosophy)has anti-political effects is not necessarily to denounce it. There are huge differ-ences in the forms of anti-political action that exist; ranging from those whichthose which recognize the value of disagreement to those which, through theuse of censorship, force or violence, suppress any form of opposition. A demo-cratic society is one which places particular value on the right to dissent and tocontest, but the defence of this political norm should exist in conjunction withthe protection and enhancement of other cultural, economic and political

rights.9 In such a society, legislation is not grounded in reason, and rarely in aconsensus, but may be justied in relation to the needs of the collective to reachagreement on matters of common interest, while recognizing the necessaryexistence of continuing disagreement about what the collective is, what its needsare and what is of common interest. Isabelle Stengers uses this as a starting pointfor a positive denition of political science:

The specialist in political science deals with a dimension of human societies

that is not the material for an ‘objective’ denition, practiced in ‘the name of science’, because in itself this dimension corresponds to an invention of de-nitions. Who is a citizen? What are his or her rights and duties? Where doesthe private end? Where does the public begin?

(Stengers 2000: 59)

In politics the collective is not a given, but an entity in process.10 The fact thatthere is never likely to be a consensus about what the collective is and what indi-

vidual rights and duties are does not prevent the emergence of a common view.Conversely, the need for a common view does not make the fact of disagreementevaporate. ‘Instead it means that our basis for common action in matters of justice has to be forged in the heat of our disagreements’ (Waldron 1999: 155).In general, legislation and technical regulation have the effects of placing actionsand objects (provisionally) outside the realm of public contestation, therebyregularizing the conduct of economic and social life, with both benecial andnegative consequences. The divisions between the realm of political contesta-

tion, on the one hand, and the realms of law, administration, science and theeconomy, on the other, are always temporary and, in principle, contestable.Those engaged in politics are necessarily concerned with the tension and the




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relation between political and anti-political activity; between the politicizationand the depoliticization of other realms.

The politics of calculation

But what of the specic relation between politics, technology and the economy?In what way can the organization and operation of markets either become apolitical matter, or be prevented from becoming so? And what role does scien-tic and technical calculation have in these processes?

A starting point for thinking about these issues is the opposition, which is

often drawn by sociologists, between calculation and politics. In sociology, fromWeber onwards, calculation is often regarded as an essentially anti-politicalinstrument, in the sense used here. Calculation is thought to reduce the spaceof the political and to limit the possibility for disagreement. When situationsbecome calculable it is taken to indicate the fact that political contestation hasended. There is something of this argument in The Laws of the Markets,although it is reformulated in terms of the concept of framing. A situationbecomes calculable, according to Callon, when it has become framed. ‘No calcu-

lation is possible without this framing which allows one to provide a clear listof the entities, states of the world, possible actions and expected outcomes of these actions’ (Callon 1998: 19). The performance of calculation and the for-mation of calculable agents depend on the existence of a frame. But how doesthis occur? How are situations framed, such that calculation becomes possibleat all?

Consider one example – the measurement of urban pollution caused by cars.Pollution, typically takes the form of what Callon calls an overow (1998:250–5). It frequently exists outside the frame of normal economic calculation.All the effects of a car purchase on noise, the safety of children, on local levelsof carbon monoxide and ozone and on global warming are simply not taken intoaccount when a car is purchased – or at least they are unlikely to be consciouslytaken into account in the transaction between the buyer and seller.

However, this situation may change once a local authority places pollution-monitoring devices next to the road, and car drivers are ned for driving pol-

luting cars.11

The frame can shift. The possibility of being ned might beginto affect the driver’s calculations about what car she drives and to what extentshe keeps it in a good state of repair. In being made visible through measure-ment and through the operation of the law, it is hoped that pollution will enterinto the frame of the car driver’s decisions. She might choose to buy a carwhich uses a cleaner fuel, or has lower emissions, or abandon the car altogether.Likewise, the environmental costs of motoring might enter into the manu-facturers’ calculations as well, as governments – receiving more and more

negative environmental information from the streets – raise fuel taxes andcreate tax differentials between more and less polluting forms of fuel andmore or less fuel efficient vehicles. Through measurement, overows become




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calculable. The costs of such overows become factored into specic economictransactions, in ways the immediate participants may not always be aware.

This is a version of the old sociological story about rationalization. Through

measurement, a whole range of objects and problems is brought into the frameof economic calculation. In this way, scientic measurement and economiccalculation have largely anti-political, but arguably benecial, effects. Calcu-lation increases reexivity about the organization of the market, but it alsoeffects a reduction in the potential space of political conict. When they meetin the showroom, the car buyer and the car seller do not enter into a heated con-troversy about the politics of global warming or the effects of cars on the healthof schoolchildren or on asthma sufferers. In various ways these have already

been made calculable by others – working in Whitehall, Brussels and in labora-tories in Paris and Munich. The political differences and moral dilemmas of carbuyers have been partially resolved elsewhere. Those involved in the market donot worry about morality or politics, not because they are immoral or apolitical,but because enormous efforts have been made to make morality and politicscalculable, and make them happen in other places. The use of measurement, incombination with regulation, policing and the law, serves to reduce the possi-bility of political conict over the purchase and use of cars.

The impressive efforts to measure urban air pollution are indicative of abroader trend. Recent years have witnessed increasing activity on the part of government, consumer and environmental groups and standardization bodies tomonitor the properties and effects of technical practices. A vast number of engi-neers and natural and social scientists are engaged not in research but in thebusiness of measuring and monitoring properties.12 Such measurement activi-ties are conducted for the purposes of environmental monitoring, qualitycontrol and assurance, market regulation or consumer advice. At the same time,in more or less rigorous ways consumers themselves are involved in this enter-prise. Increasingly, in the interest of environmental protection and fueleconomy, individuals and families have themselves been encouraged to monitortheir use of technology and have been given the information to do so.13

Callon and his colleagues have spoken of an economy of qualities in whichthe measurement of properties becomes increasingly important (Callon et al .2002). This idea can be extended. It is possible to talk today of a government

of qualities, and of the critical role of various levels of government in both fos-tering and extending this economy and in funding and regulating what I wouldcall metrological regimes.14 In the UK, the garage mechanic who performs theMoT test on the car, to see if its exhaust emissions meet national and Europeanstandards, is a typical member of a metrological regime.15 The mechanics’practices have the effect of translating a particular framing of a political debate(about pollution) into the economic eld. In a mediated form, his metrologicalwork also plays a critical role in the calculations of buyers and sellers con-

cerning the value of the car. In this way, politics and the market are connectedto each other, but political confrontation does not come to interfere withmarket transactions.16




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The instability of framing

But the situation is more complex than this. Measurement and calculation do

not only have anti-political effects. They do not just have the effect of restrict-ing political controversy in the economic eld. They also, at the same time,provide the basis for an opening up of new objects and sites of disagreement.In what follows, I discuss two specic issues. One concerns what I term thefragility of metrological regimes. The second issue concerns the inventivenessof measurement practices.

The fragility of metrological regimes

While the enormous efforts of the authorities to measure pollution lookimpressive from a distance, the whole apparatus of measurement and calcu-lation is much more fragile than it rst appears. In part, this fragility is afunction of the weakness of standardized metrological regimes when judgedagainst the more complex analyses that often derive from on-going research.In the case of routine air pollution measurement, for example, from the point

of view of research scientists such information is massively overproduced.17

Measurements of air pollution in the city occur only at particular points andit is very difficult to say what air pollution is at other places in the city, even ahundred yards away from point at which a permanent air quality monitoringdevice is placed.18 Certainly, it is almost impossible to establish an exact corre-lation between air pollution measurements and health statistics, except inextreme conditions. Greater levels of pollution certainly do contribute to badhealth but it is very difficult to say how much (Barry 2001: 170). Moreover,despite the efforts of garage mechanics to measure the levels of pollution fromcar exhausts, such measurements may actually have surprisingly little relationto the performance of cars on the road. In the mechanic’s garage, the compo-sition of the exhaust fumes from the car is measured when the engine isidling.19 On the road, however, the exhaust is likely to contain the highest con-centrations of pollutants when the car is starting, or in a traffic jam, or accel-erating rapidly, and there is no straightforward relation between such

concentrations and the concentrations of common pollutants as measured inthe garage. A car that fails the mechanic’s test in the garage may, in practice,produce lower levels of pollution on the road than one that passes the test. Inthe garage the car is abstracted from the complexity of the relations withinwhich it exists at other times. On the road, it always functions in conjunctionwith a driver and in relation to a whole series of other entities including othercars, traffic lights, fog, rain, speed cameras and policemen.20 Increasing effortsare made to measure pollution levels but for scientists it is very difficult to

know what the results of these activities mean. One could tell a comparablestory about other metrological regimes. In general, the formation and legiti-macy of metrological regimes increasingly rely on the use of standardized




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procedures.21 Yet standardized procedures will not be able to capture thecomplexity of objects and practices in actuality. Moreover, once established anddiffused, metrological regimes based on the use of common standards may be

difficult to transform, despite a recognition of their weaknesses. Their limi-tations may be difficult or costly to rectify.22

Certainly, routine monitoring and measurement activities often have anti-political effects. Governments, environmental organizations, laboratories andrms may all apply themselves to the task of increasing the quantity andenhancing the accuracy of environmental data. Attention is devoted to improv-ing the practice of monitoring and testing. Garage mechanics are required todo further training to make sure that their measurements are comparable with

each other’s. But this vast metrological regime is much more fragile than onemight imagine. The situation has been framed – in the sense that a whole seriesof other questions about urban pollution and urban politics have been dis-placed (Rydin 1998), but the organization of any regime is always open to thepossibility of contestation. There is an agreement, whether consensual orforced, to accept the truth of measurements and the legitimacy of the regu-latory practices with which they are associated but this agreement is notgrounded in science, but in the much more uncertain procedures of metro-

logical practice (Latour 1999a: 258–9).In these circumstances the work of scientists can have political rather than

anti-political effects. For scientic work can identify the weaknesses in this vastexercise in routine monitoring and measurement. Potentially at least, far fromrestricting the space of contestation, further scientic calculations may serve toopen it up. They may reveal the limitations of all the investments of govern-ments and environmental organizations in monitoring pollution levels. Indeed,in the case of air quality measurement, it is relatively easy for research scientiststo demonstrate the weaknesses of existing metrological regimes.23

To be sure, there is no general political crisis about how car exhaust fumes aremeasured or how air quality is monitored on the street. Consumers simplyaccept the validity of the test, and environmentalists press for further increasesin the level of monitoring. But in other cases the weaknesses of metrologicalregimes are revealed. Consider, in particular, the case of BSE. Despite the hugeinvestments in the inspection of farms and abattoirs, for example, the limitations

of such inspection regimes have become apparent. After many years, there isstill no commonly accepted method for ensuring that beef is safe to eat acrossEurope.

Given that routine metrology is so weak to further interrogation, how dometrological regimes survive? There are two possible options. One option is toprotect the fragility of metrological regimes. Measurements and assessments areroutinely conducted, by abattoir inspectors, garage mechanics, structural engi-neers, nancial analysts, auditors and so on, but the form and content of their

assessments are rarely subject to wider scrutiny and debate. To be sure, the waysin which the fragility of metrological regimes are protected are various. Theydepend on the use of a range of anti-political devices. An explanation of why it




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took so long for BSE to be recognized might include, for example, discussion of the particular culture of scientic advise in Britain, the existence of a culture of secrecy in government, the role of the farming lobby and a failure to adopt a

precautionary policy in the context of scientic uncertainty.

24

In the otherinstances, the fragility of metrological regimes relies on the fact that metrologyitself is given a market value. For example, in the British context much regu-latory and measurement work is contracted. Government laboratories havecome to have a semi-privatized existence, acting as agencies of central govern-ment and, potentially, competing for other agencies for government business.They ‘sell’ their advice to central government. According to the privatecompany, Serco, which manages the government laboratory responsible for

fundamental measurement standards, there is no conict between an orientationtowards the market and a public sector ethos.

Serco has a particularly strong culture that embodies people, ethics and anethos that enables us to work easily with public sector bodies. We adopt astance towards customer relationships that can be reconciled with the pro-vision of public services through the private sector. This is not an articialstance that we have taken with a view to a particular market – it is a culture

that has become embedded because it describes the organization we wish tobe.25

This contractual arrangement – among other factors – has made it difficult forscientists to raise questions about the reliability of metrological regimes even if they so wanted. Once their knowledge is sold to government, they may simplybe unaware of how their knowledge is represented in public by governmentofficials and ministers.26 At the same time, because they depend on governmentfor business, laboratories that sell their services may be less likely to produceconclusions that criticize government policy.

The second option is to open up metrological regimes to greater scrutiny andto acknowledge the weaknesses of measurement and the uncertainties of economic and scientic calculations. In the wake of the BSE crisis, among otherproblems, there are some indications of movements towards this option.27 InBritain and France there have been demands for more constructive debatesbetween experts and publics. Some writers have framed the need for greater level

of dialogue between experts and publics in terms of the notion of risk.28

‘Whensociety has problems with science, it is often over questions of uncertainty andrisk’ (House of Lords 2000: 7). But the issues are much wider. As Michel Callonargues elsewhere, many of the debates associated with BSE, GMOs and, mostrecently, foot-and-mouth disease have not been narrowly concerned with theissue of risk. They have involved a much wider set of issues, including the roleof American multinationals, agricultural employment and sustainability, theethics of intensive farming and the dominant market position of supermarket

chains. In short, recent years have seen increasing demands for a politicizationof the technological economy.29




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The inventiveness of measurement

Metrology puts new objects into circulation. It multiplies realities by creating

objects that can be regarded neither as reections of reality nor as the expres-sions of the social subjects who created them. Reality is not a blank screen ontowhich social categories can be projected. Metrology creates new objects thatmake a difference in the world. When presented as information, measurementsdo not merely inform – they make demands on those who should be informed(Strathern 1999, 2000). In so far as it is treated as the source of information,metrology has performative and regulative consequences.

Consider the importance of measurements of, and experiments on, metal

fatigue in rail tracks following the rail crash at Hateld, on the main line northof London, in October 2000.30 At Hateld, a train travelling from LondonKing’s Cross to Leeds derailed while travelling at 115 miles per hour. It soonbecame clear that the accident had been caused by a broken rail. According tothe owners of the track, Railtrack plc, within hours Railtrack engineers had‘identied some signicant deterioration in the condition of the rail’.31 Later itwas stated in public that this was likely to have been caused by ‘gauge cornercracking’, itself the result of metal fatigue. Despite reports in January 2000 by

engineers working for the Railtrack sub-contractor, Balfour Beatty, that theHateld track should have been re-railed, the track had not been re-railed norhad speed restrictions been imposed in order to reduce the stress on theweakened track. Later reports highlighted the systematic under-investment of Railtrack in track repair, the lack of engineering expertise on the Railtrack boardand the failure to maintain an adequate programme of monitoring of the stateof railway infrastructure. The company did not have a detailed register of itsassets, or their condition. Assessments of the conditions of track that had beenmade were neither systematic or co-ordinated nor acted upon. The Hateldcrash was not an accident.32

To be sure, metal fatigue in rail track is difficult to detect, to investigate andto analyse. First, laboratory simulations are extraordinarily inexact. Tracks inlaboratories can never be subjected to the same range of temperature variations,surface contamination and stress resulting from complex variations in trainspeed and load, to which they will be subjected in commercial use. The level of

track lubrication, which varies considerably with weather conditions and theform of track maintenance, signicantly affect crack growth, for poorly under-stood reasons.33 Second, it may be difficult to locate or detect cracks caused bymetal fatigue on rails in use. Indeed, according to the UK government Healthand Safety Executive, the ultrasound equipment commonly used to detectcracks on railways may not have been able to detect the kind of cracks found inthe rails at Hateld. The Hateld cracks may have been too slanted from thevertical:

The [ultrasound] techniques [used on British railways] allow for rail to beclassied as ‘untestable’ under certain circumstances, in particular, when




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metal has been lost from the rail surface by a process known as ‘spalling’ whichappears to have been the case at Hateld. Laboratory examination hasrevealed that the transverse fatigue cracks present in the Hateld rail were

located in the angular range 20

0 –

35

0

from the vertical. Hence, had the railbeen testable, it is possible that all the fatigue cracks would not have beendetected.

(HSE 2001: 13)

But, following a crash, however difficult they are to interpret, and howeverinexact and contested earlier observations and measurements of rail trackfatigue had been, they have to be taken into account. They demand a response

on the part of those who are in receipt of such information. They have animmediate regulative effect. ‘Railtrack acted swiftly to accept responsibility forthe terrible accident at Hateld. Railtrack’s actions since the accident have beentaken in the light of the lessons learned from the initial investigation and theengineering understanding of gauge corner cracking’.34 Given the uncertain-ties in the science of metal fatigue and the evident weaknesses of its existingmetrological regime, Railtrack responded with extreme caution. Speed restric-tions were immediately imposed throughout the UK railway network causing

chaos on the rail network, as it was no longer possible to keep to existingtimetables.

Sociologists have sometimes wanted to nd political or sectional interestsembedded in the calculations of experts (Callon and Latour 1992). But the caseof the rail track suggests a different conclusion. In this case, the observations of the Health and Safety Executive and the calculations of experts about fatigue inrail tracks had political effects precisely because such calculations are not

reducible to politics. Metallurgy and mechanical engineering – the most materialof disciplines, which contain no obvious traces of political impurity – proved tobe the most profoundly political in their effects.35 Because they were not associ-ated with any particular political doctrine, the mechanics of metal fatigue raisedquestions about the viability of a model of economic organization based on theregulation of private monopolies. Far from having anti-political effects, thecalculations of engineers had political resonances.36 They ooded across thepolitical eld. Demonstrations of the state of rail tracks were political demon-

strations of a kind, but they were not ones that could be associated with anyidentiable political actors. As a result, they were much more difficult to policethan demonstrations conducted in the street. Fatigue cannot be explained awayas the expression of particular political interests. It exists, as Whitehead wouldsay, as a stubborn fact.37

In Isabelle Stengers’ account, an event can be understood as a creator of difference. It is in the middle of a eld of effects, which does not mean that itis the cause of such effects. An event has a factual existence, yet this existence

does not pre-determine the response to it, even while it creates the necessity of a response (Stengers 1997: 215–16). The force of an event is itself in question.It is resisted only when its existence is ignored:




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The scope of the event is part of its effects, of the problem posed in the futureit creates. Its measure is the object of multiple interpretations, but it can alsobe measured by the very multiplicity of these interpretations: all those who,

in one way or another, refer to it or invent a way of using to construct theirown position, become part of the event’s effect. In other words, every reading – even a reading that denounces the event as a fake – still situates the one whoproposes the reading as an heir, as belonging to the future whose creation theevent contributed to.

(Stengers 2000: 67–8)

In this sense, the failure of the track at Hateld turned out to be a political event.It became the centre of actions, questions and responses on the part of a vastrange of agencies that were compelled to respond to the fact of the crash. Thestubborn fact of metal fatigue demanded a response yet the course of thisresponse could not be predicted. This response was not merely technical.However briey, it raised questions concerning the relations between theorganization of markets, the management of companies, the role of engineersand the performance of technology. It served to reveal the inadequacies of theparticular form of market organization that had been established through the

privatization of the railways. For a few months, ‘Hateld’ came to occupy thecentre of eld of political activity that went far beyond the local problems of repairing a particular stretch of track.

Politics and the technological economy

This paper began with a discussion of politics of a conventional kind: thepolitics of elections, political parties and governments. This form of politicsrelies on a careful framing of political actions and events. It demands thedevelopment of anti-political as well as political technique. Parliamentary archi-tecture and procedure, press management and public relations, organizationaldiscipline, policy analysis and focus groups, party membership and pollingstations provide just some of the array of devices and forms of knowledge thatserve to contain and channel the space of politics. Political actions and eventsare framed, and they are kept separated, as far as is possible, from any contami-

nation by the economic eld. Although political actors are always entangled inmore or less complex networks of economic relations and nancial obligationsand transactions, somehow, miraculously, the vast technical apparatus of politicsmanages to keep these elds more or less distinct38 – although the exceptionsseem to be increasingly common.39 A vote in an election or in parliament shouldbear no more visible traces of economic interests than the money exchanged fora car bears any visible traces of political ideology.

The increasing importance of measurement and information in the economy

might be thought to have anti-political effects. Governments have become lessconcerned with questions of distribution and public ownership, and moreconcerned with fostering a culture of regulation, monitoring, measurement,




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auditing, testing and compliance.40 And all these activities – the whole government of qualities to echo Callon – can be delegated to experts. Metrology – in all its forms – becomes a secure relay between the political and the economic

eld. It connects them, yet keeps them distinct and pure.But this is not exactly what happens. On the one hand, the development andpreservation of these new metrological regimes actually requires a lot of anti-political work. Measurement activities are much more vulnerable to interro-gation than one might imagine. Metrology, in itself, does not have the resourcesto defend itself against interrogation. Either institutions need to be protectedfrom external scrutiny or external scrutiny must be managed in a way that doesnot provoke an excessive politicization. Contracts need to be awarded to bodies

that can be trusted. Reports and information must be released at the appropri-ate time to the appropriate audiences.41 The appropriate persons needed to beappointed to committees.42 In so far as external scrutiny does occur it must bechannelled and organized through the organization of public enquiries anddemocratic forums. Measurement activities do not increase reexivity ingeneral. They intensify it in certain directions (Power 1997). On the other hand,measurement can have political effects. It can reveal objects and phenomena,which cannot be merely explained away as expressions of political or economic

interests. Far from creating a clean and secure connection between the world of politics and the world of the economy, measurement becomes a conduit for con-tamination. The organization of economic activity becomes a political matter.43

Notes

1 Cf. Waldron (1999: ch. 6).

2 See the collection of papers on the US presidential election brought together in the June 2001 issue of Social Studies of Science. As Mike Lynch notes, the media coverage of the election drew attention to the ‘local contingencies associated with the politico-techniques of voting and vote counting’ (2001: 417).3 See, for example, Butler et al . (2000).4 A sense of the specicity of politics as a practice and an experience is suggested inthe work of Michael Oakeshott (1962) in his criticism of rationalist accounts of politics.5 Cf. Barry et al . (1995).6 Political theorists have tended to want to place emphasis on one side of this equation

or the other. See, for example, the different perspectives on the political collected togetherby Seyla Benhabib (1996). Political theorists are divided over the question of whether thegoal of politics should be the end of politics or its continuation. Should politics lead toconsensus and agreement or should it, as Bonnie Honig argues, ‘affirm the inescapabil-ity of conict and the ineradicability of resistance’ (1996: 258).7 My thanks to David Owen for both the argument and the reference to Waldron’swork.8 Although see Bonnie Honig (1993) on the association of the dominant tradition of political theory with the justication of anti-politics.9 Hannah Arendt (1964) argued that a social and economic justication for the anti-politics of administration and management historically subverted and displaced the valueof democratic freedom.10 For an expansion of the notion of the collective that include non-humans as well as




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humans, see Latour (1999b: 351). Latour draws here on the philosophy of A. N.Whitehead (1929, 1985).11 Cf. Latour (1999a: 186).12 The development of metrology in natural science and engineering on a large-scale

is a nineteenth-century phenomenon. On the history of metrology see, in particular, theessays collected in Wise (1995). In the advanced industrial countries metrological workis a major recipient of public money. Institutions involved include the National Bureauof Standards in the USA, the National Physical Laboratory and the Laboratory of theGovernment Chemist in the UK, and numerous international organizations.13 In the UK this has taken the form of public information campaigns on such mattersas air pollution, the possible effects of the use of mobile phones on children, domesticinsulation, vaccination and AIDS.The relation of experts to the public has shifted fromone in which the public are primarily addressed as uninformed to one in which they are

addressed as individuals who require and demand information in order to make choices(Rose 1999; Barry 2001: chs 6, 7).14 On the history of metrological regimes, see the essays collected in Wise (1995). Ametrological regime is a zone in which measurement has come to take relatively stan-dardized forms.15 As the example of the garage mechanic suggests, many of the elements of suchmetrological regimes are to be found in the private sector. Indeed, it is a feature of contemporary forms of government that the State increasingly delegates responsibilityfor measurement activities to other agencies (Barry 2001).16 See Slater (2002) for further analysis of this point.17 Interviews, London, 1996–7.18 Penn et al . (1996).19 Testing procedures are quite different in different countries. In Germany, forexample, testing is not delegated to private garages that may be unreliable and poorlyequipped.20 Mike Michael develops the notion of the co-agent to describe the existence of entities (such as the driver-car) that contain both human and non-human elements(Michael 2000: 93). In this case the signicant relation is between two different co-agents – the driver-car (the agent of pollution) and the street-person (who breathes polluted

air). The heterogeneity of such co-agents is difficult to capture through the developmentof standardized metrological regimes.21 Rather than the relatively unstandardized observations of individual professionalsand laypersons, for example (Osborne 1992).22 On the lack of reversibility of techno-economic arrangements and the associationbetween irreversibilization and standardization, see Callon (1991: 151).23 See, for example, Hickman and McCrae (1995) and Sadler 1996.24 An excellent review of the literature on the BSE crisis is given by Seguin (2000). Onthe culture of scientic advice in Britain and its relation to the crisis, see Jasanoff (1997).

On the precautionary principle, see Dratwa (2000).25 http://www.serco.com/uk/au_009.htm. The policy of establishing governmentresearch and development institutions as either privatized or autonomous agenciesdeveloped under the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s. However, theidea that government laboratories should ‘sell’ their advice to government has a muchlonger history. As early as 1972 Lord Rothschild established the so-called customer-contractor principle for government science (Department of Industry 1972). However, amuch more signicant shift occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s when most govern-ment laboratories (with the exception of defence research laboratories) became agencies

and were run by private companies. The National Physical Laboratory was semi-priva-tized in 1995 and is now operated on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industryby NPL Management Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Serco (www.npl.co.uk).26 Interviews, Transport Research Laboratory, 1996.




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27 In Britain see, in particular, House of Lords (2000).

A meaningful response to the need for more or better dialogue between the public andscience in the United Kingdom requires us to go beyond event-based initiatives like

consensus conferences or citizens’ juries. The United Kingdom must change existinginstitutional terms of reference and procedures to open them up to more substantialinuence and effective inputs from diverse groups.

(House of Lords 2000: 7)

28 Particularly following the work of Ulrich Beck (1992, 1995).29 Callon (2002). Such demands have not come just from social movements andactivists. In response to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in pigs, sheep and cattlein the UK in February 2001, Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of the ‘arm-lock’ whichthe major supermarkets had over ‘you people’ (the farmers). ‘Blair woos farmers in price

“arm lock”’ (Guardian 2 March 2001), ‘Law to break supermarkets’ grip on farmers’(Observer 4 March 2001).30 Paul Virilio (2000) notes that the history of the technological invention is also ahistory of technological accidents.31 First HSE interim report, cited in House of Commons (2000).32 ‘Why an accident like Hateld was waiting to happen’ (Financial Times 22 February2001). Ulrich Beck has argued that technological hazards are a manifestation of socialimperfection. ‘It is not something external but itself that society encounters in thehazards that convulse it, and the reigning paralysis can only be overcome in so far as

society apprehends the hazards as signposts to its own history and its own corrigibility’(Beck 1995: 159).33 Interview with Catherine Pitt, Cambridge, February 2001. According to her:

These studies did not include a range of track conditions, and so the effects of varyingaxle load and train speed cannot be examined. Only heavy haul lines were investigated:the wear situation may be quite different on high speed lines. There is also the factthat real rails experience a much larger range of environmental conditions than steelsin wear tests. There is the possibility of quite large temperature variations, contami-nation of the rail surface by dirt and dead leaves, and lubrication by rain or snow.

(Pitt 2000: 25)

34 Railtrack response to Select Committee report, 14 December 2000, http://www.railtrack.co.uk/corporate/noticeboard/article.cfm35 In this context I take mechanical engineering and metallurgy to refer not just toacademic disciplines but to an array of specic technical practices with which they areassociated. In this case such practices include grinding, monitoring, repairing and lubri-cating sections of track.36 Following the Hateld crash there was considerable opposition to government plans

to privatize UK air-traffic control operations. The government were also forced tocompromise over their plan to privatize the London Underground in the face of oppo-sition from the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and the Chief Executive of LondonUnderground, Bob Kiley.37 In Whitehead’s analysis the notion of the ‘the stubborn fact’ refers to the capacityof arrangements of social and natural entities (‘organisms’) to set limits on possibleevents: ‘The macroscopic meaning [of the organism] is concerned with the givenness of the actual world, considered as a stubborn fact which at once limits and provides oppor-tunity for the actual occasion’ (Whitehead 1929: 129).38 Even if they are revealed. Although the funding of political parties or radicalorganizations is often apparent, this does not mean that it is easy to establish a connec-tion between economic interests and political positions and activities.39 Consider, for example, the scandals and events associated with the names of Helmut




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Agamben, Georgio (1993) The ComingCommunity, Minneapolis: MinnesotaUniversity Press.Arendt, Hannah (1964) On Revolution,

London: Faber.Barry, Andrew (2001) Political

Machines: Governing a Technological Society, London: Athlone Press. —— and Rose, Nikolas (1995)Governing European Science: Forecastingand Evaluation in the EuropeanCommunity, Swindon: ESRC. ——, Bell, Vikki and Rose, Nikolas

(1995) ‘Alternative political imaginations’,Economy and Society 24(4): 485–7.Beck, Ulrich (1992) The Risk Society:Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage. —— (1995) Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk, Cambridge: Polity.Benhabib, Seyla (ed.) (1996) Democracyand Difference: Contesting the Boundariesof the Political , Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press.Butler, J., Laclau, E. and Zizek, S.(2000) Contingency, Hegemony,Universality, London: Verso.Callon, Michel (1991) ‘Technoeconomicnetworks and irreversibility ’, in John Law(ed.) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays onPower, Technology and Domination,Oxford: Blackwell. —— (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1999a) ‘The role of lay people inthe production and dissemination of

scientic knowledge’, Science, Technologyand Society 4(1): 81–94. —— (1999b) ‘Ni intellectual engagé, niintellectual dégagé: le double stratégie de

l’attachement et du détachement’,Sociologie du Travail 41: 65–78. —— (2002) ‘Technology, politics and themarket’ (interview with Andrew Barry andDon Slater), Economy and Society 31(2). —— and Latour, Bruno (1992) ‘Don’tthrow the baby out with the bath school!A reply to Collins and Yearley’, inAndrew Pickering (ed.) Science as Practice

and Culture, Chicago: Chicago UniversityPress, pp. 343–68. —— with Méadel, Cécile andRabeharisoa, Vololona (2002) ‘Theeconomy of qualities’, Economy and Society 31(2).Department of Industry (1972)Framework for Government Research and Development ’, Cmnd 5046, London:

HMSO.Dratwa, Jim (2000) ‘The precautionaryprinciple: stakes and options for policymaking’, mimeo, Paris: Centre deSociologie de l’Innovation, Écoles desMines.Health and Safety Executive (2001)Train Derailment at Hateld, 17 October 2000, second HSE interim report.Hickman, A. and McCrae, I. (1995)Evaluation of a Remote Vehicle Emission

Measurement System, Project Report105/TRL.


Kohl, Peter Mandelson, Edith Cresson, Neil Hamilton, Bill Clinton, and Enron amongothers. On the history of political scandal, see Thompson (2000).40 See, in particular, Power (1997), Rose (1999) and Strathern (2000).41 In the European Commission all research and development programmes were

formally evaluated. However, those involved in commissioning evaluation were acutelyaware of the need to control the production and circulation of evaluation reports (Barryand Rose 1995).42 The development of effective institutional forms of anti-politics long predates thedevelopment of the audit culture. While the recent critical interest in the emergence of the ‘audit culture’ is important, there is a real danger of romanticizing the regime whichpreceded it.43 Thanks to Mike Michael for his comments on the paper and to Catherine Pitt inhelping me to understand the mechanics of rail-track fatigue. Thanks above all to David

Owen for his extensive comments and contribution to the argument.

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