1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910457715503321

Autore

Busch Lawrence

Titolo

Standards : recipes for reality / / Lawrence Busch

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge, Massachusetts : , : MIT Press, , c2011

[Piscataqay, New Jersey] : , : IEEE Xplore, , [2011]

ISBN

0-262-29785-X

1-283-30282-9

9786613302823

0-262-29873-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (403 p.)

Collana

Infrastructures series

Disciplina

389/.6

Soggetti

Standardization

Standardization - Social aspects

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Sommario/riassunto

Standards are the means by which we construct realities. There are established standards for professional accreditation, the environment, consumer products, animal welfare, the acceptable stress for highway bridges, healthcare, education -- for almost everything. We are surrounded by a vast array of standards, many of which we take for granted but each of which has been and continues to be the subject of intense negotiation. In this book, Lawrence Busch investigates standards as "recipes for reality." Standards, he argues, shape not only the physical world around us but also our social lives and even our selves. Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power -- that they often serve to empower some and disempower others. He outlines the history of formal standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and things. Busch suggests guidelines for developing fair, equitable, and effective standards. Taking a uniquely integrated and comprehensive view of the subject, Busch



shows how standards for people and things are inextricably linked, how standards are always layered (even if often addressed serially), and how standards are simultaneously technical, social, moral, legal, and ontological devices.