A Sociology of Standards? Commentary on Benjamin Singer's Proposal

Abstract

There are two basic components to Singer's analysis of standards. The first is concern with disjunction in North American professional and organizational life between the and standards of social structure and systems ostensibly generated to guard them (p. 206). Singer argues that systems, which are widespread in our major institutions, have generated dynamics of their own which undermine which should prevail in a well-ordered (p. 207). The second dimension to analysis centers on growing uncertainty about, or decline in, standards over past several decades. While first issue is well established in critical perspectives on North American culture, second is less well substantiated, and source of much controversy in contemporary social science debates. This comment will treat two elements of Singer's analysis separately. The first section will consider ways in which Singer's proposal might be advanced, while second will raise questions about apparent decline in societal standards. A final section will try to place proposal in larger sociological context. Professional and Institutional Pathologies Singer connects notions of values, standards, and hierarchically, with being of general goals, objectives, and purpose, standards substantively focused evaluative statements about thing, process or outcome, `located' between and and the dynamic aspect of standards, i.e., standards are held, are applied (pp. 207). Given that we live in an Age of Criteria, Singer devotes majority of his attention to major types of (outcomes, credentials, process/interaction), production of (experts, norms, external criteria), and biases which are widely associated with centrality of in professional and institutional life (availability, classifiability, measurability, vividness, activity). Choosing examples from variety of settings, Singer focuses on dysfunctional consequences which result from dominance of systems in North American life. Using information from world of university education, Singer argues that teacher ratings systems and publication ratings schemes (quantity, journal status, and citations) distort and undermine more significant values which should inspire educational activity. Similar pathologies afflict other professional and institutional domains, to point that criterial systems exert control over standards, rather than standards driving criteria (p. 215). This is familiar stuff. First, tendency of professions and bureaucracies to employ rules which generate unintended, negative consequences for themselves is widely recognized. However, usual response, one which has some persuasiveness, defends these consequences as inevitable costs for implementing and defending these rules. Whether one is dealing with corrosive competitiveness of law, or calculating impersonality of our larger bureaucracies, one can usually identify core value whose centrality can only be maintained with other, negative outcomes. The essential connection here involves dilemmas and tradeoffs, with Mertonian balance sheet arbiter of standards applied. Second, conservative and radical commentators on North American culture have converged in their critical evaluations of ways in which mainstream pragmatism and empiricism displace standards with criteria, and with measurement. It is no accident that Singer can comfortably cite Marcuse and Ortega y Gasset on same theme: liberalism has successfully withstood challenges to its instrumentalism because it has contributed to construction of durable institutions whose biases have minimized damage to fundamental structure of capitalist democracy in North America. These two points can be made more specific by returning to educational arena which Singer utilizes. …