The Ordinal Society: A conversation with Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy
Venue
Lecture Theatre 2, 29 Buccleuch PlaceDescription
The Ordinal Society: A conversation with the authors, Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy
Join the authors in person with Donald MacKenzie and members of The Platform Social for a lively discussion that explores their critique of how digital capitalism is reformatting our world. Grab a coffee, listen to Fourcade and Healy share further comments on their book, and join in with your own questions and comments. All are welcome to this public event.
If you are unable to join us in person, please register for the online livestream version of this event here.
The Ordinal Society is set to move debate forward, opening up questions that reach beyond surveillance into how personal data has, as Natasha Dow Schull put it ‘come to modulate contemporary existence not only its dreary routines, creepy supervisions and troublesome extractions and biases but also its experiences of delight, connection and effervescence.’ Frank Pasquale remarks, "If any work can advance contemporary social theory for our age of AI and bring it to a wide audience, it is The Ordinal Society. With the elegant theory of ordinality as a common thread uniting disparate phenomena, Fourcade and Healy sort out key paradoxes of digitality, particularly the way in which computation simultaneously promotes democratization and hierarchy. This important book deserves to have a lasting influence in sociology and beyond."
Chair: Afshin Mehrpouya, Culture Accounting and Society (CAS) Research Network
Discussants: Donald MacKenzie and The Platform Social
Venue: University of Edinburgh Business School - Lecture Theatre 2 (BS_LG.18 ), 3-5:30 PM
Hosted by Culture, Accounting and Society (CAS) Research Network, University of Edinburgh Business School, and Data Civics at Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI).
Sponsored by the Journal of Cultural Economy.
About the Authors
Marion Fourcade is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Economists and Societies, which received the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Book Award and the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for the Social Studies of Science.
Kieran Healy is Professor of Sociology at Duke University and the author of Data Visualization and Last Best Gifts, which received the Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Research on Non-Profit Organizations and Voluntary Action.