From Measuring Rods to DNA Sequencing

"Why do you measure and why are you also measured? What measurement tools are used to offer a quantified vision of the body and its parts, its growth, and of human life itself? Is measurement the same thing as quantification? Based on in-depth historical investigations and case studies from the 19th century up to the present day, this book proposes enlightening answers to such questions. Combining basic insight from the 'classics'-Foucault, Rose-on the political dimension of measurement with contextualizing epistemologies, it brilliantly shows how ontologies emerge from various social 'assemblages'."-Marie Gaille, philosopher, senior researcher, Université de Paris-CNRS This book provides a solid basis to understand two centuries of bodily measurement practices and their scientific and political scope throughout the Western world. By exploring various cases, it proposes a new approach of measurement from an epistemological point of view and demonstrates the central role of the measurement of the body for political purposes. By studying categorizations of race, age and quality of life between the 19th and 20th century, the first part of the book highlights how human body measurements extend from the flesh to subjective experience. The second part shows how genomic correction and life support technologies reshape the frontiers between things, humans and social subjects. The final part reveals how contemporary measurements of age, race and disease gave rise to new hierarchies between human beings and social groups. The book concludes by considering different styles of measuring the body and their ontological consequences.

Auteur
Ingrid Voléry is full professor of sociology at the Université de Lorraine and member of Laboratoire Lorrain de Sciences Sociales (2L2S).
Marie-Pierre Julien is lecturer of sociology and anthropology at the Université de Lorraine and member of 2L2S.

Texte du rabat
Why do you measure and why are you also measured? What measurement tools are used to offer a quantified vision of the body and its parts, its growth, and of human life itself? Is measurement the same thing as quantification? Based on in-depth historical investigations and case studies from the 19th century up to the present day, this book proposes enlightening answers to such questions. Combining basic insight from the 'classics'Foucault, Roseon the political dimension of measurement with contextualizing epistemologies, it brilliantly shows how ontologies emerge from various social 'assemblages'.Marie Gaille, philosopher, senior researcher, Université de Paris-CNRS
This book provides a solid basis to understand two centuries of bodily measurement practices and their scientific and political scope throughout the Western world. By exploring various cases, it proposes a new approach of measurement from an epistemological point of view and demonstrates the central role of the measurement of the body for political purposes. By studying categorizations of race, age and quality of life between the 19th and 20th century, the first part of the book highlights how human body measurements extend from the flesh to subjective experience. The second part shows how genomic correction and life support technologies reshape the frontiers between things, humans and social subjects. The final part reveals how contemporary measurements of age, race and disease gave rise to new hierarchies between human beings and social groups. The book concludes by considering different styles of measuring the body and their ontological consequences.

Résumé
This book provides a solid basis to understand two centuries of bodily measurement practices and their scientific and political scope throughout the Western world. By exploring various cases, it proposes a new approach of measurement from an epistemological point of view and demonstrates the central role of the measurement of the body for political purposes. By studying categorizations of race, age and quality of life between the 19th and 20th century, the first part of the book highlights how human body measurements extend from the flesh to subjective experience. The second part shows how genomic correction and life support technologies reshape the frontiers between things, humans and social subjects. The final part reveals how contemporary measurements of age, race and disease gave rise to new hierarchies between human beings and social groups. The book concludes by considering different styles of measuring the body and their ontological consequences.

Contenu
Chapter 1: Introduction: What measuring means.- Part I. The Measurements of the human body between the 19th and the 20th century: from the flesh to the subjectivity.- Chapter 2: Producing Otherness Through Resemblance. Bodily orifices and the measuring of the human (1800-1860).- Chapter 3: Talking Bones: age in 19th-century forensic handbooks (1813-1906).- Chapter 4: Thinking quality of life: from measures to categorizations of the human beings.- Part II. Between objectivization and subjectivization: How forensic identification, genomic correction and life support technologies reshape the frontiers between things, human person and social subject.- Chapter 5: Being born in the era of genomics.- Chapter 6: From technicized bodies to body technologies: the human in resuscitative care, between objectivization and subjectivization.- Part III. Measurement and the Rise of New Hierarchies between human beings.- Chapter 7: Bone Geopolitics. Bone Age and the Racialization of Growth in UK and US Pediatrics (1940-1980).- Chapter 8: Models of corporeality and controversies around puberty.- Chapter 9: Everyone for himself and all together? Thinking race between social science, epidemiology, and medicine.- Chapter 10: Conclusion: Measurement as an ontological scalpel.