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Call for book proposals for our new series Quantified Societies & Selves
with Bristol University Press.
Please email us with interest.
Series Editor: Phoebe V. Moore, University of Leicester, UK
Associate Editors:
Quantified work - Kendra Briken ([log in to unmask]), Phoebe V. Moore ([log in to unmask])
Quantified health – Ruth Cain ([log in to unmask])
Quantified culture – Btihaj Ajana ([log in to unmask])
Quantified social reproduction – Kylie Jarrett ([log in to unmask])
Quantified globalisation and change – Saori Shibata ([log in to unmask])
The recent surge of research on metrics, quantification, algorithmic calculation and data reflects a social and historical moment where machines and humans appear on the brink of convergence and/or battle. Vast investment in machinic interventions is encouraged by a widespread belief that machines are superior in calculation, measure and quantification to humans. Metrics have begun to infiltrate everyday life, institutions, governance structures, the workplace, and healthcare; labour, bodies and increasingly, leisure must be made readable and trackable in terms of ‘outcomes’ and ‘outputs’.
In the face of increasing automation of both unskilled and skilled work, the capacity of artificial intelligence to outthink humans is causing significant concerns. High profile developments such as the Go chess victory and the development of facial recognition and profiling technologies elicit breathless wonder at the capabilities of algorithms and big data, combined with real anxiety at the dystopian potential of a machine-run world.
Books in the Quantified Societies and Selves series will examine the power relations that emerge in this context, where numeration is upheld as superior to human reasoning; where the search for objective ‘truth’ is increasingly glamorised. Books will explore not only the future possibilities indicated by quantification research but the developing regulation of algorithmic governance, covering institutional decision-making in the fields of (for example) healthcare, education, security, the workplace and justice.
Multidisciplinary in scope, Quantified Societies and Selves is an international series that welcomes contributions from a broad range of academic fields. Books will typically be between 80,000 - 120,000 words in length and will include both authored and edited works. Our books will be written for academic audiences and are peer-reviewed, although given the nature of the series we encourage authors to consider how their work can be made accessible to non-specialist readers.
Download the series flyer here.
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