Call for papers - Dossier: What do the numbers do? Productions, uses and effects of quantifying everyday life (Mediações, vol. 26, n.2 – 2021/2).

Editors: Glaucia Maricato (Freie Universität Berlin) e Vitor Simonis Richter (UFRGS).

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to our attention the intense circulation of tables, graphics, statistics, and ranks used to narrate the new virus’ infections and deaths “behavior”. These data became the center object of disputes and negotiations that explicit the political effects of numerical narratives. For a long time now, Social Sciences has analyzed the mensuration process of populations and social phenomena as power relations and, more recently, it has advanced the discussion on how complex social processes are transformed and reduced to numbers. In this special number, we invite researchers to embrace the social life of numbers and rankings that take part in contemporary practices and technologies of government. We look forward to gathering papers that draw from empirical research on the productions, uses and effects of quantitative data from different numerical productions from health policy and practice, scientific practices, governance, justice, activism, and global policy.

Call for papers will be open until March 15, 2020. Contributions should be submitted through the journal's online system:

http://www.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/mediacoes/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

For a more detailed view of the proposal and objectives of this dossier, access:

http://www.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/mediacoes/announcement/view/301