The Social Life of Standards: Ethnographic Methods for Local Engagement

Janice E. Graham · Christina Holmes · Fiona McDonald · Regna Darnell

Apr 2021 · UBC Press

Ebook

256

Pages

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About this ebook

Standards. We apply them, uphold them, or fail to meet them. But how do they get made? Through twelve ethnographic case studies, The Social Life of Standards reveals how standards – political and technical tools for organizing society – are developed, applied, subverted, contested, and reassembled by local communities interacting with norms often created by others. Contributors explore standards at work across different countries and contexts, such as Ebola biomedical safety precautions in Senegal, Colombian farmers contesting politicized seed regulations, and the application of Indigenous standards to Canadian environmental assessments. They emphasize the uncomfortable fit between the inconsistent implementation of standards in the real world and the non-negotiable criteria presupposed by external forces.

The Social Life of Standards provides support for a reflexive process that involves local engagement. Ultimately, the goal should be to reach a balance between evidence-based science and the social contexts that can inform more useful and appropriate standards.

About the author

Janice Graham is University Research Professor, a professor in medicine and social anthropology, and former Canada Research Chair in Bioethics in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University. Christina Holmes is an assistant professor in the interdisciplinary Health program at St. Francis Xavier University. Fiona McDonald is Co-director of the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the Queensland University of Technology, and an adjunct associate professor in the Department of Bioethics at Dalhousie University. Regna Darnell is a distinguished university professor emerita and adjunct research professor of anthropology at Western University.

Contributors: Xavier Anglaret, Craig Candler, Alice Desclaux, Liz Fitting, Laura Gutiérrez Escobar, Shawn Harmon, Dean Jacobs, Jane Jenkins, Mavis Jones, Udo Krautwurst, Frédéric Le Marcis, Robert Lorway, Denis Malvy, Gerald P. McKinley, L. Jane McMillan, Ian Puppe, Daouda Sissoko, and Tamara Wattnem

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