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This paper was originally published as:
Callon, Michel, and John Law (2005), 'On Qualculation,
Agency and Otherness', Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space, 23: (5), 717-733. Please refer to the original
publication for the definitive text.
This version was published by heterogeneities.net on 29th
December, 2010, at
http://www.heterogeneities.net/publications/CallonLaw2005
OnQualculation.pdf
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On qualculation, agency, and otherness
Michel Callon
Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines, 62 Boulevard
St Michel, Paris 75006, France; e-mail: [email protected]
John Law
Centre for Science Studies and Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster
LA1 4YN, England;
Abstract.
In this paper we explore the boundary between calculative and noncalculative action by arguing that
these are separate but mutually constitutive. By using the notion of qualculation, a neologism
coined by Cochoy, we redefine the notion of calculation to include judgment. We then argue that
making qualculability is not trivial: that it takes effort to create calculation and judgment. But it also
takes effort to consider nonqualculability. Two strategies for achieving nonqualculabil ity are
identified, those of rarefaction and proliferation. Rarefaction, illustrated by the cases of Quaker worship
and selfless love or agapè, works by withdrawing all qualculative resources. Conversely,
proliferation, illustrated by the attribution of cause and responsibility after railway accidents,
and by a major television fund-raiser, the ‘Téléthon’, works to impede calculation by an overload of
qualculative resources.
Introduction
H ow should w e think a b out a g e nc y? How s hould w e think a bout d iffer en t for ms of
a g e nc y? How, in pa r tic ular , s hould w e think of the d iffer ence betw een ac tion tha t
appears to be rational and that which does not? Social science has wrestled with this
last issue since its inception. Sometimes the distinction has been treated as a bound a r y , t ou t c o u r t . I t ha s b e e n a s s um e d t ha t r a t i o na l a nd i r r a t io na l a r e d i f f er en t i n
kind , ir r e c onc i la b ly op p os e d to one a n oth e r , a nd mu tua l ly ex c lus i ve. U s ua l ly, h ow ever , the appr oach has b een more nuanced . For instance, as is w ell known, Web er
e x p lor e d w ha t he took to b e the e lec tive a ffinity b e tw een as c etic P rotes ta ntis m a nd
the s pir it of c apita lism, and more genera lly dis tinguished four id eal types of ac tion
(1930; 1978). This classification, though more complex and contingent, nevertheless
d is t ing u is he s a c ti on tha t is r a tion a l a nd s e l f -r e fle x i ve fr om its mor e m ec ha nic a l,
n o n r a t io na l v a r i a n ts . A n d h is g e n e r a l a p p r o a c h i f no t i ts s p ec i fi c s ha s b ee n p ic k ed
u p , d e ve l op e d , a n d r e w or k e d b y mo s t o f t he m o r e r ec en t w r i te r s o n a g en c y ( f o r
ins ta nc e , G id d e ns , 1 9 8 4) . Thus a g e nc y is t yp ic a ll y s een to b e c omp lex in p r a c tic e ,
b ut re fle xivity is ta ken to b e c e ntr a l to r a tiona l a c tion. In this ap pr oac h, w hic h is
c omp a tib le w i th ma ny ve r s i ons of th e p hil os op hy of th e s ub j ec t inc lud ing th os e of
Ka nt and Be rg s on, a g e nc y is tr e a te d as the c a pa c ity to res ist c a us a lity a nd initia te
new lines of action. T his me ans tha t, however s ophistica ted a nd nuanc ed it may b e,
the r e is s till a d is tinc tion in kind b e tw e en ra tional and nonr a tiona l a c tion. T he two
belong to two distin c t univer ses —eve n if the y combine in practice to p rod uce a rang e
of hybrid forms.
There are, however, other ways of imagining agency. For instance, Dupuy (1997)
s h o w s t h a t zweckrational a c t i o n i m p l i e s t h e d e f i n i t i o n o f g o a l s a n d i s s u e s t o d o
with reciprocity that belong to other forms of action. Foucault can be read as
insisting on the simultaneously dependent and mutually exclusive character of
reason and nonreason 1. Again, it has often been argued that rational evaluation is
ine x tr ic a b ly l inke d w i th e mo tions . I n this w a y o f thi nki n g the d is ti nc ti on b etw een
r a t io na l a nd i r r a t i o na l is n ot o ne o f k in d . A n y d i vi s i o n b e tw e e n th e tw o is l i ke l y t o
be complex, contingent, variable, semipermeable, and perhaps, like the infamous coast line of Brittany, fractal like and filled with outliers and mutual inclusions. And such,
indeed, is our position.
I n w h a t f o l low s w e d e v e lo p o ur a r g um e n t b y ta l ki ng no t a b o u t r a t io n a l i t y b u t
about calculation. However, the arguments are similar in form. So me authors assume
that calculation is a universal characteristic of human action. Others take it that both
calculation a nd nonca lcula tion ca n be found in a ll huma n conduc t. We try to b ypass
the s e d eb a te s , a nd in p a r tic ula r th e id e a t ha t c a lc u la ti o n a nd non c a lc ula t ion b e long
to different universes. Instead, like Foucault we suggest that they are mutually con stitutive: tha t all ca lculation builds itse lf with and against nonca lculation —and vic e
v e r s a . W e a l s o a r g ue , a s a p a r t o f t hi s , th a t c a l c u l a t i on a n d no n c a l c u l a t i o n r es id e
not primarily within human subjects but in material arrangements, systems of meas urement, a nd methods of d is placement —or their abse nce. This in turn mea ns tha t
c a lc ula ti on a nd n onc a lc u la ti on c ome in ind e f ini te ly ma n y va r ia n ts . T his a p p r o a c h
suggests that they are Other to each other —indeed, separate but also mutually impli cated. The implication is that if there is a boundary between them then it is complex.
Str a ig h tfor w a r d g e og r a p hic a l me ta p h or s w ill no t w or k: mor e c omp lex ver s io ns of
spatiality are needed.
We start by redefining the notion of calculation, broadening it to include categories
of action such as judgment with which it is usually contrasted. To catch this broadened
sense of calculation we follow Cochoy and talk of qualculation. We argue that making
qualculabilities is not trivial: that it takes material and social effort to produce spatial
p r ac tice s ap p r op r ia te to q ualc ula tion. T he n w e tur n to the ma in top ic of our pa p er:
the b us in e s s of making incalculabilities. I nc a lc ula b ili ties , w e a r g ue, a r e ena c t ed j us t
as much as calculabilities. 2 Like calculabilities, we suggest that they are specific in
character. And then we argue that they are created in two contrasting strategies which
w e c a ll rarefaction a nd proliferation. By us ing the c a s es of the Qua ker m eeti ng for
worship, and agapè (selfless action on the basis of unconditional love), we suggest that
rarefaction works by removing the resources or relations needed for calculability. Then,
with the help of two further examples (the attribution of cause and responsibility after
railway accidents, and a major television fund -raiser, the ‘Téléthon’), we argue that
prolifera tion works the othe r way round to imp ede ca lculation b y pr oviding a n
overload of calculat ive resources.
Calculation
John Law (JL) So you ’ ve b ee n w r iting a b out ma r ke ts a nd c a lc ula tion. Ca n you fill us
in?
Michael Callon (MC) If we look a t the etymolog y, then this tends to b lur the d ivide
between calculation and ‘mere judgment’, between accounting and estimating. As
Be nve nis te ha s s how n, in Latin c omp uting a nd j udg ing (or es tima ting) a re c losely
related. Putare, the root of the term ‘computing’, refers to a literal process of detaching
(cutting) and reattaching that leads to a result. In the phrase ‘ rationem ducere’, ducere
(the r oot of the w ord ‘j udgment ’) mea ns to lead (or cond uct) a c ount, or to arr ive at a
conclusion having reviewed the elements of the problem.
JL This helps?
MC Well, I hop e so, beca use I want to s ay tha t ca lcula tion ca n be und erstood as a
thr e e -s tag e p r oc es s . T his , at a ny r a te , is w ha t F ab ia n Muniesa and I ha ve tr ied to
a r g ue . 3 F ir s t, the r e le va nt e ntit ie s a r e s or te d out , d eta c hed , a nd d is p la y ed w ithi n a
single space. Note that the space may come in a wide variety of forms or shapes: a
sheet of paper, a spreadsheet, a supermarket shelf, or a court of law —all of these and
many more are possibilities. Second, those entities are manipulated and transformed.
Relations are created between them, again in a range of forms and shapes: movements
up and down lines; from one place to another; scrolling; pushing a trolley; summing up
the evidence. And, third, a result is extracted. A new entity is produced. A ranking, a
sum, a decision. A judgment. A calculation. And this new entity corresponds precisely
to—is nothing other than —the relations and manipulations that have been performed
along the way.
JL I’ve got some reservations about this. For instance, do we really want to call all
versions of this process ‘calculation’? This is a term that implies enumeration, and it
carries a sizable quantitative baggage. But if I let that pass then I gue ss what you’re going
to say is that in this way we can think in the same terms about (quantitative) calculations
and (qualitative) judgments. That they are all about arraying and manipulating entities in
a space in order to achieve an outcome, a conclusion.
MC Y es . P r ec is e ly s o. Qua ntita tive ly, in one wa y or a nother . Qua lita tively, ag a in in
one wa y or another . Or anything in be tween. T his is the importa nt point. And since
you’re worried about the terminology perhaps I should mention that Cochoy ta lks of
‘qualculation’. 4 By this he means calculation, whether arithmetical in form or not, the
manipulation of objects within a single spatiotemporal frame —which can be done
in indefinitely many ways.
JL I tend to think we have introduced too many neologisms into social theory, but this
is one that I like. It nicely collapses the distinction between the quantitative and the
qualitative. So let ’s thank Cochoy and make use of his term. Though I ’d add, and this
s ur e ly is imp or ta n t, t ha t t h e ob j e c ts tha t e nd up in a s p a tiot emp or a l fr a me d on ’ t
preexist it in that form. They are also being made by it, made into a shape that fits.
MC Yes. Precisely so. Qualculation implies qualification. Things have to qualify b efore
they can enter a process of qualculation. More work. Though, to press the point again,
this can be—this is—done in an endless number of ways. With an endless range of
mechanisms and devices.
JL Yes. And this is an STS [science, technology, and societ y] point. It is necessary to
attend to the ma ter ia lities, the r ole of ma ter ial devices . Qua lculation is imp ossib le
w ithout ma te r ia l a r ra ng ements: p a pe r a nd pe nc il; the benc hes in a c our t of law ; a
system for tallying arrivals and departures; a supermarket. Qualculation is a material
p r oce ss , a ma ter ia l s e t of pra c tic e s. But a ll this ma kes me w a nt to r a is e a q ues tion
about a term you’ve smuggled in along the way.
MC Which is?
JL The id ea of the spatiotemporal frame . In your paper with Muniesa you wr ite:
The entities taken into consideration are sorted out: they are detached and
d i s p l a y e d i n a s i n g l e s p a c e ( a n d h e r e w e h a v e t o ma k e t h e e f f o r t o f i m a g i n i n g
"
all the possible forms of this single space: from a sheet of paper to a caddy at the
supermarket, from a simple slate to the input band of a Turing machine). ’’ 5
But what is it to display in a single space, in a single spatiotemporal frame? What does
this mean? I can see that you are imagining all sorts of possibilities. But I want to add
that the notion of spatiality itself deserves —and has been the object of —considerable
theorising. This isn’t the moment to go into it, but it doesn ’t take too much effort of
imagination to think, for example, of versions of the spatial —and therefore of spatial
r e la tions , r a nking , a nd a ll the r es ttha t ha ve little to d o w ith g eog ra p hic a l sp ac e.
M C For instance?
J L Well, for instance, there are network comparabilities, similarities, and differences.
In these, comparability would be an effect of configurational stability. Or fluid forms,
where comparabilities would become possible as a consequence of slowly changing
configurations. Or fire forms, where they might have to do with productive oscillations
between absence and presence. And no doubt there are endless others.
M C You’ve lost me.
J L Well, I’m referring to ‘after-ANT’ [actor-network theory] work on the character of
objects and sociotechnical topologies. 6 But the specifics don’t matter. What is important is
that we make sure that qualculation does not get itself attached to a narrow
unde rsta nding of spac e –time framing . The charac ter of c ompar ability, and manipu lability, this needs to be left open. At a guess, for instance, judgment is often distributed
a c r os s time a nd g eog ra p hica l s p ac e . I t flows , unfolds , a nd r eflec ts loc a l sp ec ific ities .
It cannot be drawn together at a single commonsense space and time.
M C N o p r ob l e m . N o d o ub t t h e r e a r e d if f e r e n t s p a t i a l a n d t em p o r a l v er s i o ns o f
q ua lc ula tion. Common to the m all, howe ve r , is tha t they ta ke effor t. Sup er mar kets ,
legal systems, and pocket calculators don ’t grow on trees. They take time and money to
or g a nis e . T ime , mone y, a nd e ffor t. The e le me nts on whic h they w or k need to b e
disenta ngled fr om where ver the y wer e be for e. Fr om wha tever for m it was tha t t hey
took. There is nothing natural about qualculation. But then neither is there anything
na tur a l ab out the a bs e nc e of q ua lc ula tion. M a king a nd unma king rela tions — b oth of
these take effort.
J L Okay, so let me summarise. With Muniesa you ’ve created a broader definition of
c a l c u l a t i o n — o r q u a lc u l a t i o n. A n d now t h e m os t i mp or t a n t b o un d a r y i s no l o ng er
between judgment and calculation, but between arrangements that allow qualculation
and those that make it impossible.
M C Yes. But let me add one last thoug ht before we move on. Becaus e if we think in
this way then we also have a way of thinking about the p o w e r of qualculation and
nonqualculation. The power of a qualculation depends on the number of entities that
can be added to a list, to the number of relations between those entities, and the quality
of the tools for classifying, manipulating, and ranking them.
J L We ll, p e r ha p s . I s e e th e p oint o f w ha t yo u ’ r e s a yi ng . But i t imp l ies — ha h — th e
capacity to count the number of entities and relations, and to rank them. That is, it
implies a ma ter ial appa ratus of its own. Which is fine , is quite c onsis tent w ith wha t
you’re arguing, but could no doubt be done in endless different ways!
M C P oint t a ke n . T he r e is n o vie w fr om n ow he r e . T ha t ’ s imp lic it in th e c ommit men t
to ma te r ia lity. But I ma d e the ar g ume nt b ec a us e I wa nt to s a y tha t it a pp lies to
nonqualculation as well. Methods of nonqualculation may also be more or less power ful. Be more or less effective. There is, as Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot noted,
‘grandeur’ in noncalculation. 7
J L T ime to t ur n t o nonc a lc ula ti on, t he n. T o nonq ua lc u la tio n. T ime to t ur n t o a n
example.
Quaker worship
MC So te ll me a b o ut Q ua ke r w or s hip .
JL Okay. But the point I nee d to make is n ’t specific to Quakerism. I ts ab out cer ta in
kinds of sacred spaces. Anthropologists have written about places that are set aside to
resist calculation as a part of religious experience. Here’s a contemporary version taken
from rec ent anthrop ologica l stud y of conte mporary Br itis h paga nism:
For magicians, ritual is a space of resistance to the rationalism of the wider culture.
Ritua ls ar e viewed as a spac e wher e a ma gic ian g ains contac t wi th the otherwor ld,
a special ‘ plac e be twee n the worlds ’ , whe re magic tra nsforma tions a re sa id to
occur.’’8
"
MC So you’re saying we’re interested in spaces of resistance?
JL That ’s a way of putting it. Resis tanc e to qualcula tion.
MC So w ha t d o the Qua ke r s d o?
JL Are you asking what it is they are trying to achieve, or how they go about enacting
it?
MC Both. We need to know both why and how they resist ‘the rationalism of the wider
culture’.
JL Okay. On what they are trying to achieve. The answer is a loss of selfhood in a
collective, a group, where mostly there is silence (the Quakers call this ‘silent ministry’)
but sometimes someone speaks (this is ‘spoken ministry ’). Neither is about the actions
of the peop le involve d. Rather it is the H oly Sp irit a t wor k. T he Holy Sp ir it only ac ts
when you, the worshipper, do not act yourself, but let things go including your own
desires, thoughts, reflections about the daily round. The advice is that if you find that
you are thinking about daily things, or worrying about them, or deciding about them,
the n this is unlikely to be the Holy Spir it at w ork.
MC This sounds like hard work. The act of letting go is tough. It needs preparation.
T h a t ’ s w h a t É m i li e G o ma r t a n d A n t oi n e H e nn i on s ug g es t i n t he ir w o r k on th e
passions of drug users and musical amateurs. 9
JL Yes. And Ingunn Moser has talked about this, too, in her work on disability where a
discourse about what is ‘lacking’ for disabled people is in conflict with another discourse
to do with letting go: for instance, in extreme sports such as downhill skiing or sky diving. 10 Like Gomart and Hennion, she shows that letting go is hard work. And her w or k
a ls o s ug ge s ts tha t this is a n iss ue tha t our c onte mp ora ry d is c ours es ha nd le singularly
badly: letting go as an act that is both active and passive. Except that I guess putting it that
way, to talk of ‘active’ and ‘passive’, recreates the difficulty by reproducing the dualism.
Perhaps we need to think about the old Christian term ‘passion’.
MC Yes. This is largely lost to general use in its mediaeval meaning, except when we
ta lk a b o ut ‘ t he p a s s ion of J e s us on the Cr os s ’ . P a s s ion , p a in. Her e it c onn otes a
mixture of suffering (the original linguistic root of the term in Latin), of being acted
upon or p assive, and an emotion that s eizes the pe rson. This may b e religious, or ,
perhap s more commonly in the contemporar y Weste rn w orld , in rela tion to roma ntic
love, or some kind of other commitment. We are still (just about) able to say: ‘I am
passionate about my lover, about dance, or about socialism ’. But the root point is that
letting go is tough. Being taken over is tough. Being passionate is difficult.
JL Being pass ionate is d iffic ult beca use it is to be both active a nd to b e used . The
Quakers are quite explicit about this:
Each one of us must come expecting not only to receive but to be used. ’’ 11
"
‘ U se d ’ doe sn ’ t s ound g ood in mos t c ontemp or a r y d isc our s es . F r om ma nag er ia lis m
through the ‘third way’ to feminism, these all tell us that passivity is a bad, that one
should seek out active subject and agent positions. But passion is about both passivity
and activity. And as a part of this it is about breaking down the divisions between the
self and the Other. In Quakerism, for instance, between the self and the Holy Spirit.
MC You started off by talking about the resistance of a sacred space. Then you talked
a b out t he work involve d in t his , a b ou t how it ’ s toug h . I thoug h t yo u w er e g oing t o
talk ab out the work of d isentang lement, b ut now you sound as if you ’r e also talking
a b out e ntang leme nt. I t s ound s a s if you ’r e s a ying tha t pa s sion is a c tive – pa ss ive
e n t a n g l em e nt w it h o t he r for c e s fo r i ns ta nc e , th e H o l y S p ir i t.
JL Yes. That’s right. I don’t see this too clearly, but I think disentanglement implies
e nta ng le me nt. T he y ma ke ea c h othe r a nd a t the s a me time they a r e Other to eac h
other. Perhaps you imply this in your own writing when you talk about overflowing. A
boundary, so to speak, implies the cross -boundary work of making that boundary and
putting things on the other side which then ‘overflow’ the division. The normal implies
the abnormal. The garden implies the weeds.
MC Okay, b ut how d oe s this he lp us to think ab out nonca lc ula b ility?
JL It’s going to depend on the character of the disentanglements. This is your second
question—about how Quakers go about what they are trying to achieve. Your cases of
market calculations are disentanglements that secure calculability. But, as we suggested
above, there may also be disentanglements that secure uncalculability. And, indeed,
though they d on ’t use the la nguag e, this quite nicely ca tches wha t the Qua kers are
trying to do. We know from our STS that subjects or subject positions are enacted in
heterogeneous relations. As we said earlier, relations are heterogeneous both discur sively and materially. Well, the Quakers have a set of material and discursive practices
for disentangling from qualculability. For losing themselves in the passionate.
MC For instance?
JL Materially, people meet for an hour each Sunday in a simple room. They sit quietly
in a circle of chairs. They try to ignore the sounds from outside. They pray silently, or
they meditate, or perhaps they read the bible or some other significant text. What they
are trying to do is quite active. They are trying to empty their minds of distractions. To
become receptive to the workings of the Holy Spirit. Mostly they will sit there silently
for the whole hour. Tha t ’s the sile nt ministry I mentioned a moment a g o. A few will
feel moved to speak: that ’s the spoken ministry. And other people present will reflect
on that ministry, sense, as they put it, whether or how it ‘speaks to their condition. ’
MC That’s a nice phrase for the passionate, isn ’t it? If I’ve caught the English right, it
implies nothing to do with deciding, with calculating, with qualculating. It is an active
process of waiting to learn or appreciate.
JL Yes. That’s right. And that is what many of the texts, the discursive components of
Quakerism, are about. For instance, when you read these you learn that you should never
involve yourself in debate in meeting for worship. If ministry speaks to your condition then
good. If not, then you should allow it to wash over you, remembering that i t may speak to
the condition of others. In particular what you shouldn ’t do is get up and disagree. (Indeed,
there are procedures for stopping debates on the rare occasions they do occur. If this
happens then an elder, a senior member of the meeting , may rise and call for a period of
quiet reflection.) And there are other forms of advice. For instance, it is suggested that
when irrelevant thoughts stray into your mind you should not fight these but notice them
and then let go of them. So the techniques of disentanglement are both active and passive.
But they are all about letting go of the boundaries of the person. Of giving up, for the
moment, the possibility of qualculation, of having an opinion, of making a consistent
and centred position or argument on one’s own behalf. All the Quaker advices point in
the s ame d ir ection. I f the voice of the Spirit is to s pea k, then the p erson needs to
dissolve himself or herself as a separate calculative being. This is the disentanglement.
Entanglement in the noncalculative, the distributed, the uncentred, requires first a
disentanglement in the qualculative. It is a strategy of calculative rarefaction . 12
Agapè
MC All of this makes me think of agapè.
JL How so?
MC This is a Greek word that comes to us through Christian theology: it refers to the
love of God for people. A love that is freely given without thought or expectation of
return. A love that is prior. 13 It isn’t Eros, sexual love or desire. It isn ’t lust for
something. It implies the abnegation of personal desire. Of means and ends. It is just
love. By extension it is the love not only of God for people, but people for one another.
S o me t im e s p e o p l e t a l k a b ou t it a s ‘ b r o th e r l y l ov e ’ . S e lf l es s lo v e. L o ve w i t h ou t a im
or amb ition. All of this means tha t it is nec essar ily Other to q ualc ulation.
JL Othe r to qua lc ula tion?
MC Yes, for here agapè needs to be distinguished from gift giving even if it is related to it. As
you know Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel Mauss tried to separate gift -giving and
market transactions. N Thomas showed that this distinction, if right at a theoretical level,
does not mean the existence of separate spheres: the two are always intertwined. They both
imply qualculation: gift-giving can be understood as a system of reciprocal transactions. In
the case of the Kula ring, prestige is attached to particularly noteworthy arm shells and
necklaces . I t could , indeed , be see n as a s ystem of trad ing in pres tig e. The g ift may
be reciprocal or agonistic; this is one of the reasons why the analysis of gift -giving is so
complex. The other reason is that gift giving may also be close to agapè: purely altruistic. 14
Here there is no calculation, no reciprocity, no agonistic trial. Size isn ’t being measured. Or
‘grandeur’, greatness. The qualculations of self-interest disappear. The boundar y between
qualc ula tion and nonqua lculation is not b etwe en g ift -g iving a nd markets; it passes
within gift-giving. Gift-giving mixes up, in variable proportions, q ua lc ula t ion a nd
nonq ua lc ula t ion. T ha t he lp s us to und e r s ta nd w hy M a us s ’ s a na lys is is so fascinating:
it shows that gift -giving is a nexus of tensions between two regimes.
JL Okay. But then it’s a bit confusing to use the term ‘gift’ for both.
MC Agreed. But how would this work in English? Perhaps when we talk of noncalculation
we shouldn’t talk of ‘the gift’ but ‘the present’. It’s a play on words of course. Presents
make present. They circulate to assure presence. They have nothing to do with returns
or countergifts. What would a ‘counterpresence’ be?
JL Well, as we know, the antonym of presence is absence. Logically. It depends on —helps
to create—absence.
MC That’s right. The reciprocal gift is a poison. It poisons the recipient. Whereas the
present is the refusal of absence: simply that. Its Othering.
JL I ’ l l n e e d to t h i nk a b o u t t h is . I t s o un d s l ik e a w a y of b e in g i n w hi c h O t he r in g
swallows up all the other versions of ab sence. All those versions of absence that might
be acknowledged. All those absences that are manifest in presence. 15 It sounds tough
again.
MC Yes. The pure gift, the present, that excludes all possibility of return, is only possible
within specific and rigorous conditions. The investments that it requires may be consi derable. Its every trace must be erased. Any possibility of relating and ranking. Amnesia,
Otherness, must be imposed, maintained, guaranteed. The right hand must forget, know
nothing about, what the left hand is up to. If this amnesia is interrupted and calculation
bursts in then agapè is undone. We are back in the realm of endless calculation (endless
because one of the rules of reciprocity is that calculation never stops). Here we need
empirical studies. How is amnesia constructed? What kinds of work does it take?
JL Okay. So I think you ’re saying several things. One is that agapè is not a natural
state of being. It takes active disentanglement from qualculation to create the possibility
of agapè. A lot of effort in a process of rarefaction. The resources for qualculation have to
be taken away. A second is that agapè is its own set of entanglements. If I love my son, or
my sister loves me, it is not that we are, so to speak, disentangled from one another.
Rather it is that our entanglements refuse to be calculated or made explicit. T h e y ’ v e
b e e n O t h e r e d . B u t t h e n t h i s m a k e s m e w o n d e r a b o u t a g e n c y . A b o u t w h o or w ha t
is a c ting . O n your a c c o unt , or ig ina lly i t w a s G od , thoug h p er ha p s he or s he is no
long e r i n the p ic tur e . Bu t, a fte r t he d e a th of G od , i n a g a p è it s ti ll is n ’ t me that is
acting, is it? Because isn ’t this another case of the passionate? So the Quakers lose
selfhood because they set aside qualculative entanglements. But something sim ilar is
happening with agapè. It is a matter of passion, of suffering, being seized, taken, used. MC
Okay.
JL But I’ve got a final point. Beca use if ag apè is Other to qua lcula tion, then this
makes me think that it is under threat.
MC How so?
JL Be c a us e q ua lc ula t ion ins is ts on its r ig hts e v e r yw her e. Y ou ha ve w r it ten a b o ut
markets, economic logics, and the construction of commercial relations. But of course
calculation is linked both etymologica lly a nd histor ically with accountability. There is ,
I sometimes think, a fetish for accountability, at any rate in the places where I live. I
have to be accountable in my job: the courses that I design, my mode of teaching, the
effects of my teaching, I am now accountable in all of these in audits that deter mine
how well or otherwise I am doing. But the power of accountability, the making explicit,
reaches beyond managerialism. Its rhetoric sails, also, under innumerable radical flags.
Justice, it is a rgue d, ca n only be ac hieved if powe rful gr oups —teachers, profess ionals
o f a l l k i n d s — a r e m a d e a c c ou n t a b l e . A r e m a d e t o g i v e a c c o u n t s . T o l o o k b o t h b a c k
at what they did, but forward to what they should be doing.
MC Whole libr aries of books might be writte n ab out this . Indeed, whole librar ies of
books have been written about it! Michael Power has written about the ‘audit society’
to index this phenomenon—one which, I respectfully suggest, achieves its highest art
f o r m in A ng lo p h o ne s oc ie t ie s . A n d T h e od or e P o r t e r h a s t r a c ed t h e or ig i ns o f o ne
ve r s ion o f th is — tha t of q ua ntif ic a ti on — to t he ne e d for w ea k p r ofes s ions to a c c oun t
for and justify themselves in a public space. His argument is that where there is little
trust between different groups then there is need for a calculative lingua franca. 16 So
what you are describ ing is a context where qualculative effects replace trust.
JL But the logic of agapè implies that qualculation cannot go with trust! It is ruthlessly
Other to it. I sense this rather fiercely in my own professional life. I wilt when I have to
account for myself. And I don ’t think this is because I ’m a bad teacher. It is because
teaching, when I do it well as I think I sometimes do, is outside any possibility of
accountab ility. It is a labour of love. And the passion that it is carr ied in is dr ied up
when I have to account for it.
MC Y ou a r e a p hilos op hic a l r oma ntic , my d ea r c olle a gue!
JL Yes, though I also try to keep it under control by working with rationalist coauthors
from time to time. But while I am on the top ic...
MC ... I w ouldn’ t want to s tand in the wa y of a g rand p assion....
JL ... I also think that there is something wrong with the word ‘trust’. My intuition is
that sociologists tend to use it far too much. When they use phrases such as ‘the erosion
of trust in a post -foundational era ’ they are obviously on to something important. But
here’s the catch. To talk about ‘trust’ is already to render it discussable, accountable,
qualculable. ‘Can I trust you?’ Or ‘I trust you completely ’. These are explicit questions or
d e c is ions a b out acc ountab ility. Ag a pè ( a ls o a w or d I c onc ede, s o a lso w ithin
d is c our s e ) p oints t o s ome t h ing before tr us t. Le t m e tr y this ou t. Ag a p è is a b o ut
pretrust. Accountability is consistent with (measuring) trust but not with agapè. I fear the
auditors will be trying to measure agapè before long, but they haven’t got there yet. And
ne ithe r w ill the y ma na g e bec a us e it w ill, of c our s e, s lip b etw een their fing ers . They
won’t ever get there. But they will chase it into the woodwork.
MC H ave you finis he d?
JL Not quite. Because I also want to say that I think there is nice work on agapè in the STS
field. I thinking in particular of work on care. People like Ingunn Moser, Jeannette Pols,
and Vicky Singleton are all looking, in one way or a nother, at how health -care systems
care. 17 Their caring work. And, at least a lot of the time, it slips between the fingers of the
system not because it is not being done, but because it can ’t be measured. So her e ’s my
p r opos ition. Ca r ing is outside ac c ounta bility. Car ing is cons tituted in agapè. It is in
pretrust. It is passion-ate. Active—passive. Painful and from somewhere else. Perhaps, as
one of the readers of this paper has suggested, it is, can be understood as, recognition.
MC I’m more attached to symmetry than romanticism, but I agree that this sounds right.
The implication is that systems of accountability sometimes (try to) colonise the unac countable, and that, as we’ve been saying, it takes a lot of work to make the rarefactio ns of
unaccountability and noncalculability. You ’ve told me that it is tough being a Quaker
because it is tough making the necessary unaccountabilities. I don ’t think that anyone has
begun to address the issue in health care where the boot, as we know, is on the other foot,
and accountability is the order of the day. But here I think we are caught in a paradox.
JL How so?
MC Because as academics we work by making things accountable, putting them onto
paper. This means that we aren ’t innocents. This isn’t the place to start talking about
different forms of writing, but, as you know, I agree with Anthony Giddens when he
suggests that our contemporary reflexive society is ‘uniquely sociological’. 18 My own
halfpennyworth here is that the social sciences contrib ute very actively to that process.
That, for instance, markets take the forms that they do in part because they are theorised
by economists. 19 But this loops us back to gifts and presents. Is gift-giving ‘really’ a system of
indirect exchange? One of (qualculative) trust in which there is reciprocity over the longer
run? Or is it ‘really’ an instance of agapè at work, outside the qualculations of trust? These are
questions that have been debated for a century by anthropologists. But the problem in
part arises because the question is formulated in realist terms. Thus gift -giving, presence, is,
for sure, enacted one way, or another. And then, as a part of this, any qualculations
attached to gift-giving, whether by participants or anthropologists, have performative
effects. If there is talk of calculation then agapè turns to calculation. Pretrust dissolves into
trust.
Rail crash
JL All of this speaks, as you might expect, to my own condition! Fear of the loss of
agapè. Resistance to the calculative. But we started off by making a somewhat more
c omp lic a te d p o int to d o w it h inc a lc ul a b ili ty a nd the p r o lifer a tio n of c a lc u la b il iti es .
MC Right. And this is important. Because so far we ’ve been talking about rarefaction.
We’ve said this is a strategy for preventing qualculation. One that takes effort. But now
we need to think about proliferation. This, too, is a strategy for impeding qualculation.
This, too, operates to generate subjects or subject positions that cannot qualc ulate. But
here is the difference. This is because they are too entangled with qualculation. Indeed,
I think we’re going to be able to show that it is sometimes used quite deliberately to
prevent the possibility of calculation.
JL I t hi n k t hi s is a ve r s i on o f N I M BY .
MC N I M B Y ?
JL N ot I n M y Ba c k Y a rd . A sta nd ar d fe a tur e of e nvir onmenta l d is p utes . P eop le w a nt
the convenience of a motorway, or even a nuclear power plant, but they don ’t want it in
their back yard. Everyone agrees in general that this or that is a good idea, but no one
wants it near them.
MC So how does this r ela te to pr olifera tion?
JL The issue came into focus for me when I started to look at explanations for recent
British rail crashes. There is some nice data on this because several of them have been
followed by public inquiries. For instance, there is the Cullen Inquiry that looked into
the causes of the rail crash at Ladbroke Grove in West London in October 1999. 20 Thes e
inquir ies a re q uasi -jud icial in form. The diffe rent pa rties tha t might have an interest
are all represented including: train operators; track and signal owners; rolling -stock
leasing companies; maintenance companies (as you know, in the UK we have a railway
system that is splendid in its diversity ). Then there are passenger groups and relatives of
the bereaved, the trades unions, the police, the Health and Safety Executive, and a lot
more. Within certain rules the proceedings are adversarial. Agonistic. Thus, though they
are all servants of the inquiry, different barristers represent and speak for different
parties. The result, as you ’d expect, is that different accounts of the accident and its
causes are offered. And, in the end, the logic is a NIMBY logic. No party wants to get
left holding the explanatory baby.
MC G ive me a n e xa mple .
JL Well, at Ladbroke Grove two trains collided more or less head -on, and thirty-one
people were killed. It was quite dreadful. A scandal. So why did it happen? The answer
is that one of the trains operated by a company called Thames Trains had been driven
though a re d light instead of stopp ing . This was pr etty g ener ally a greed by all con c e r ne d . But why d id the d r ive r take the tr a in thr oug h the r ed lig ht? T hames Tr a ins
couldn’t escape all responsibility, but it d id try to move it around for instance, to the
owner of the track and the signals, a company then called Railtrack. Railtrack, it was
a lle g e d , ha d fa il e d in i ts d u tie s to p r ovid e a full y s a tis f a c tor y s ig na lli ng s ys tem. I t
w a s a r g u e d t ha t t h e s ig na l w a s a n om a lo us , i t w a s p a r t o f a c om p l e x a nd r a th er
indecipherable array of other signals, that the lines of sight for the driver were sub standard, and that Railtrack had consistently failed to investigate and act on previous
incidents whe n dr ivers had g one p a st red lig hts b oth a t the sig na l in question and
elsewhere . So, it was argue d, Railtr ack had failed b oth technically and manager ially.
The dr iver had e rred , yes, b ut g ive n the messy sig nalling circumsta nces it was an
und e rs ta nd ab le e r ror . NIM BY .
MC H ow d i d R a i l tr a c k r e s p on d ?
J L I t tr ie d t o p in t he b la me b a c k on T ha me s T r a i ns . W hy d id the d r iver g o thr o ug h
the r ed lig ht? We ll, no d oubt for ma ny re a sons , but one of the mos t imp or tant w as
that he had not been well-enough trained. Instead of having spent years working on the
railway and building up the commensurate experience, he ’d been recruited off the street,
so to speak, and put through an intensive and fairly short programme of training. Yes,
this programme was approved by the relevant government inspectorate, but even so it
wasn’t thor ough enoug h. F or ins tanc e, he d idn ’ t r eally know the va rious c omplica ted
tr a c k r ou te s ou t of P a d d ing t on s ta ti on. I f he ’ d kn ow n m or e a b out thos e r outes h e
w ould ha ve r e alis ed tha t he w as he a ding in to d ang er . And R ailtr ac k c rea ted a nother
line of argument. I won’t explain the detail here, but they also suggested that he had
adopted a defensive driving technique that, while seemingly adding to safety, actually
increased danger under some circumstances. It meant that in some conditions he was
more rather than less likely to go past red lights. 21 Which is—it was argued—what had
happened on the fateful morning.
M C So w ha t you’ r e sa ying is tha t the tw o c omp anie s, Tha mes T r a ins a nd R a iltr ac k,
w e r e a c c ou n t in g fo r t he a c c i d e n t i n v e r y d i f fe r e n t w a y s . A n d th a t i t w a s in t h ei r
interes ts to d o so on the ‘Not in My Back Yard ’ pr inc iple.
J L Yes. Exactly so. And this is just one example. Remember that there were at least ten
or twelve major parties inv olved in the inquiry, and each was grinding its own axe. The
rail drive r ’s trades union, for ins ta nce, wa nted to pr otec t its members , which meant
that it struck up different explanatory alliances, sometimes with Thames Trains (the
signalling was too complex) and sometimes with Railtrack (training was inadequate) to
try to exonerate the driver. The solicitors for the bereaved and the injured were very
interested in the absence of an early -warning train-protection system that might have
averted the accident or reduced its severity if it had been installed. They tended to take
the view that human natur e means that d rivers will make mistakes , a nd sys tems need
to be built on this assumption. There was an additional investigation of the signallers
who were employees of Railtrack. No one thought that they ’d set the signals wrong in
the first instance, but there was a strong suspicion that they hadn ’t responded quickly
enough when they r ea lised that s ome thing was indeed g oing wrong. And tha t if they
had been quicker off the mark perhaps the accident would have been less severe. And,
as a final example, various parties took the view that the organisational fragmentation
of the railway system following its privatisation (or indeed the intrusion of the profit
mot ive into w ha t s hould , on s ome a cc ounts , ha ve be en a n ab solute c ommitment to
safety) had also contributed to the collision.
M C I think that’s enough! You’re saying that there were numerous partially overlapping
but also partially contradictory accounts. That these accounts proliferated, and made it
impossible to account for the accident. Pushed the events beyond the qualculable or the
accountable.
J L Yes, that’s the argument. But it doesn ’t quite work.
M C Why not?
J L Because the inquiry was charged to come to conclusions, so it c a m e to conclusions.
In the end Lord Cullen reviewed the various narratives, and wrote a single report, with
a set of findings and recommendations.
M C So where does this leave the argument?
J L We ll, it c e r ta inly s hows tha t acc ountab ility a nd q ua lc ula tion take a lot of effor t.
Y our a na lys is i n w hic h d is e nta ng le me nt le a d s to o ve r f l ow ing a nd fur ther e ffor ts a t
d is e nta ng le me n t, a nd t he n f ur the r ove r f low ing — a l l of t his fits the La d b r o ke G r ove
case perfectly. In other words, any particular NIMBY account makes responsibility
accountab le and q ua lculable by insis ting on the sa lienc e of certa in links ( for ins ta nce,
to the tr a in ing o f the d r ive r ) w hile ins is ti ng on t he ir r e l eva nc e of other p os s ib le
connections (for instance, to the signals). It relates them and ranks them in a particular
way. Entanglement and disentanglement, the two go together. But the issue is whether,
ove r a l l, on e is le f t w ith a c onte x t or a s e t o f e ve nts th a t c a n b e q ua lc u la ted or no t.
Or whether qualculability is pushed beyond reach.
M C Oka y. But if I c a n j us t p ic k up on your w ord s there, this dep ends on w ha t you
mean by ‘overall’ and ‘left with’. Because, let me guess, Cullen arrives at a set of
conclusions in his report, indeed a set of ‘overall’ conclusions. This is, as you put it,
what we a re ‘ le ft w ith’. But, in other c ontex ts, there may be no ‘over all’ c onclusion, o r
t h e r e a r e d i f f e r e n t c o n c l u s i o n s t h a t a r e s t i l l i n c o n s i s t e n t w i t h o n e a n o t h e r . So
o v e r e n ta ng le m e n t i n a c c oun t a b i l it y p r od uc e s t he imp os s i b i l i ty o f q u a lc ul a ti o n. J L
That’s right. The Cullen Inquiry is a nice example of the kind of qualculable space
that generates judgments that have little to do with numerical calculation. It is
spread over time. It goes through many modalities. Even, in some measure, it
m o v e s a r o u n d f r o m o n e d i s c u r s i v e l o c a t i o n t o a n o t h e r . T h o u g h w h a t t h i s i s a ls o
r e mi nd i ng m e of i s th e s o c io l og y o f s c ie n ti f ic k now l ed g e d eb a tes — t h e SS K debates—
about closure.
MC Why?
J L Well SSK tended to work on the assumption that, while there are frequent
explanatory controversies in science, these usually get resolved in some mixture of
negotiation and power: that ‘closure’ is achieved. You ’ll also find that this assumption
is also built into the ‘actor-network’ work on laboratories. 22 But if you look at other
l o c a t io ns — f or ins t a n c e , me d ic a l p r a c t ic e — i t is i ns ta n tly c l ea r th a t o ft e n c l os ur e is
n o t a c h ie v e d , a nd , i f i t is , th e n i t ma y b e t e m p o r a r y. F o r i ns t a nc e , he a lt h p r a c t i tioners live with what Annemarie Mol calls ‘the problem of difference ’. 23 They live with
multip le a nd s ome times disc orda nt acc ounts —a nd r ealities. Differ ent enta ngle ments.
The issue is rarely closure, in the sense of arriving at a long -term agreement. Rather it
is about what to do, here and now, with this patient who is seriously ill. In retrospect I
tend to think that the closure model doesn ’t work in science either, that science is far
more fuzzy and plural than it likes to pretend. But that ’s not important h e r e . W h a t i s
relevant is that the proliferation of narratives and accountabilities is a chronic
c o n d i t i o n i n m o s t c i r c u m s t a n c e s . S o m e t i m e s , j u s t s o me t i m e s , p e r h a p s as in the
Cullen Report, a single account is generated. But this is the exception rather than the
rule.
M C So the ar gument is tha t too ma ny acc ounts sp oil the broth of acc ountab ility.
Qua lc ula tion is imp ed e d b y q ua lc ula tive p r olife r a tion. And q ua lc ula tion then d ep ends
on a rather str ict ma ter ial a nd disc ursive fra ming whic h limits that p rolifera tion.
J L Yes. That’s right. The legal system with its practices, its regulations about proper
accountab ility, and its loc ations, together with its clear materia l ar rangements for
producing (let’s use the term) ‘closure’ does, indeed, secure qualc ulability for certain
purposes at least some of the time. But, a final observation, let me just note that just
b e c a us e Lor d Cul le n w r ot e his r e p or t a nd a r r iv e d a t his c onc lus ions d o es not me a n
that controversy has stopped. There are s t i l l multiple accounts out there—and Cullen’s
is only one of them. The debates rumble on.
The Téléthon
MC Multiple accounts. I’ve got a nice example in which accounts are proliferated —and
quite deliberately. It’s to do with the Téléthon.
JL Which is?
MC Which is a TV fund -raising show, now more than fifteen years old, created by the
A F M w h i c h i s t h e F r e n c h c ha r i t y t h a t s u p p o r t s r e s e a r c h o n , a n d c a r e f o r , t h o s e
suffering from muscular dystrophies. Though it was originally modelled on a US
show, it was q uic kly a nd rad ically mod ified. This was par tly beca use the AFM decided
to s up p or t g e nomic r es ea r ch into d is e as es w ith g ene tic or ig ins , a nd not to limit its
efforts to muscular dystrophy. But this was in turn partly linked to the fact that the
Téléthon was a public TV spectacle.
JL W hy d id t h is ma t te r ?
MC Because ‘the gene’ links people together. It is a great unifier. Everyone has genes!
JL Okay. So how does the Téléthon work?
MC It’s a programme that runs for a whole weekend. But it ’s a programme plus. Plus a
w hole lo t of A F M -or g a n is e d e ve nts a r ound F r a nc e . T hes e a r e or g a nis ed b y loc a l
c om m it t e e s t ha t i nc lu d e A F M me mb e r s — b ut a l o t o f oth e r p e op le to o . V o lu n te e r s ,
thos e r ec e iving s up p or t, lots of pe op le w or k tog e ther of their ow n a cc ord . P eop le in
this vi lla g e or g a nis e a t hir t y -s ix ho ur s w imming r e la y r a c e. A s p or ting c l ub ther e
or g a nis es a w ee ke nd -long ga me of b as ke tba ll. Somew her e els e p eop le b uild a wa ll.
Over he re a c limbing club sc ales a cliff. Wha t is orga nis ed is endless ly var iab le. Its
content isn’t important. It’s the format or the aim that counts. And the aim is to raise
money by getting people to participate.
JL So it w or ks thr oug h s p on s or s hip ?
MC Y es . G ifts , d ona tions , p le d g es , thes e a r e linked to ea c h a c tivity. Wha t ’ s g oing on,
I th i nk , is t h a t th e mo n e y is r a i s e d b y p r o li f e r a t i ng l i nk s b e tw ee n t he p a r t ic ip a n ts .
In effect the local organising committees are orchestrating a process in which relations
b e tw e e n p e op le a r e mul tip l i e d . A nd the n thos e r e la t ion s ta ke c onc r e te for m in th e
shape of cheques to the AFM at the end of the Téléthon.
JL I t s ound s a b it like our ‘Live Aid ’ .
MC Yes. But the link between local activities and the Téléthon itself is interesting.
Loca l ac tivities are rep orted —and shown—on the T élé thon. They app ear alongs ide the
Télé thon its elf, which is be ing broadcas t fr om a symb olic loca tion s uch as the Cite des
Sciences, or the Génopole d’Evry. This is where discussions between scientists and doc tor s
take place. Or d eba tes be tw een p rominent pub lic fig ures . Or art ists come to support
the cause. So the Téléthon is both local a nd centralised.
JL Oka y, b ut w ha t d oe s this ha ve to d o with nonq ua lc ula b ility?
MC I ts p a r tly a ma tte r of p r olife r a ti on: too ma ny l inks t o c ount . But one a c t or —
nonhuman ac tor is p a r tic ular ly imp or ta nt. T his is the elec tr onic d is p la y, a b ove the
humans, that records the total sum donated.
JL T his s ound s like ca lc ula tion.
MC Yes and no. Because the display isn ’t simply a tally. It works in a complex one might
say a confusing—way. Because the whole Téléthon brings together and orchestrates two sets
of processes. First, there are the local activities generating a continuous proliferation of
new links and entanglements. These appear on the screen as a set of events that are
constantly being interrupted and juxtaposed with one another. Juxtaposed and therefore
related. And further related. Everything is being connected with —and made dependent
upon—everything else. What ’s happening is that a collective actor is being created out
of a motley c r ow d of (now vis ib le ) ind ividua l a c tor s. T he c ollec tive a c tor is b eing
constantly enriched with new participants. The programme, then, is simply the creation
and transmission of this proliferation.
But, second process, the electronic display is supposed to continuously tally this
proliferation of links and relations. But it does so —and is intended to do so —in a way
that produces noncalculability. This is because the numbers are constantly changing.
T he y a r e c ons ta ntly c ha ng ing to r e fle c t a ll the loca l a c tivities . But the numb ers a r e
never right. They are never fixed. They never come to an end. The list is never closed.
Instead, they are always out -of-date. They reflect a set of overflowing processes, the
os c illa tion be twe e n loca l a nd ge ne ra l, the moveme nt b etw een end les s loc a l sc enes ,
rather than a finite set of stable relations. The display is not a tool for pinning things
d ow n. Quit e to the c on tr a r y . I t is int e nd e d t o e c ho a p r oc es s of ind ef ini te mul ti plication. Except that the term ‘echo’ isn’t quite right either. This is because the display is
treated as an actor in its own right. At the beginning, when the Téléthon began, the
prese nte rs started to talk to it d irec tly. The y told it tha t it c ould per suad e people to
take part in local activities, or send in donations. So causality was being reversed. 24 The
display did not follow the proliferation of links. It also produced and encouraged these.
And all this is quite explicit. The presenters tal k to the display. It has agency.
JL P e op le w ill sa y tha t this s ounds like mag ic — or fe tis his m.
MC Well, yes and no. This isn’t the place for a digression into factishism. 25 But what’s
g o in g o n c e r t a i n ly h a s n o thi n g t o d o w i t h s o -c a l le d p r el o g ic a l o r p r im i ti v e th o ug h t.
It all makes perfect sense: because the display never gives an accurate figure; because
its figures are constantly undermining those that came before; and because the money
that is moving around is a gift, a present. The counter isn ’t about settling accounts.
C l o s i n g a c t i o n . F i x i n g a n d c l a r i f y i n g r e l a t i o n s b e t w e en a c t o r s . O f d e f i n i n g t h e m .
I ns te a d , i t ’ s a b out ke e p ing thing s op e n. So the p e op le w ho p r es ent th e p r og r a mme
are right. The display and its contexts create the incalculability of the gift, the present.
They do so by producing proliferation. Indeed, it is just at those moments when the
display acts—when the presenter speaks to it—that people are most likely to lift the phone
and pledge a gift. 26
JL So wha t should we take away from this?
MC I see it this way. It’s a process in which an indefinite proliferation is being generated.
Of course the Téléthon doesn’t last forever. All excesses, including those of nonqualcul ability, discover their limits. Like the Quakers. Like agapè. Like the accounts of a railway
accident. But, if we compare it with agapè, things have been turned on their head. In the
case of agapè, there is amnesia, noninscription. There is a rarefaction in which things ,
actions , or speec hes d on ’ t j oin up in a line. But pr olifera tion w orks the other way.
Everything is written down. And more. Things are joined up in a line that never stops,
is always overbalancing, that has no end.
Conclusion
The core of our argument is simple. We are interested in agency and action. And, in
particular, we are interest ed in the boundary, inscribed in social theory, between the
rational and the nonrational. Our argument is that this makes little sense. If there is a
b ound a r y a t a ll t he n i t is no t b e tw e e n t he r a t iona l a nd t he nonr a tio na l b u t r a the r
between what, following Cochoy, we have called the qualculable and the nonqualcul able. To make this argument we have revisited the notion of calculation. This, we have
argued, often has nothing to do with quantification. Instead, it is better understood as
a proc ess in whic h e ntities a re de tached from othe r contexts , reworked, d isplayed,
r e la ted , ma nip ula te d , tr ans for me d, and s ummed in a s ing le s pa ce. How this is d one
is mor e or le s s i nd e fi nit e ly va r ia b le . A nd th e na tu r e of the s p a c e w ithi n w hic h it is
done is similarly variable. Quantitative methods, qualitative procedures, professional
judgments, or the tinkering of daily practice, all of these are qualculative. And how they
are done is a function of the material arrangements, including the bodies, in which they are
produced. Electoral systems, bank statements, the testimony of witnesses, examination
systems, the array of goods on a supermarket shelf, football league tables, road signs,
presenting symptoms in the doc tor’s surgery, the web pages of amazon.com , the chapters
of the bible, the process of driving, the use of a library catalogue, all of these and
indefinitely many more are examples of material arrangements that generate conformable
spaces and the possibility of qualculation.
Our a r g ume n t is th us tha t t he s ig nif ic a nt b o und a r y b e t w een d iffer e nt f or ms of
agency does not lie between calculation and judgment. Rather it is located between
qualculation and nonqualculation. Like qualculative spaces, nonqualculative spaces are
g e ne r a t e d i n ma te r ia l a r r a ng e m e n ts a n d p r a c t ic e s a nd c om e i n i nd e f i ni t el y m a n y
variants. Unlike qualculative spaces, they work in one way or another to refuse the
provisional capacity to enumerate, list, display, relate, transform, rank, and sum. And
we have tried to show that they do this in two distinct ways. In a process of rarefaction
the possibility of qualculation is undermined by withdrawing the necessary resources. By
contrast, in a process of proliferation, the possibility of qualculation is undermined by an
excess of resources that interact with and undermine one another.
So qualculative and nonqualculative spaces are opposites, Other to each other. This
is the significant boundary we have sought to draw in our exploration of agency. But to
talk of Otherness is to imply that it is a boundary of a particular kind. For if
qualculative and nonqualculative spaces cannot be held together then neither do they
exist in isolation from one another. Nonqualculation, as we have tried to show
above, pr ecis ely dep ends on qualc ulation. T he wor kings of the Holy Spir it depend on
the arrangement of a room that then recedes into the background, is Othered. The
overflowing of the Téléthon depends on an artful apparatus that has been carefully
q ua lc ula ted b y the A FM, thoug h ne c ess a r ily this too d isa p pea rs a t the moment the
donor reaches for the telephone to make her pledge. Nonqualculation thus depends on
the p r e s e nc e — b u t a ls o on t he a b s e nc e — of q ua lc ula t ion . And — thoug h w e ha ve no t
sought to s how this her e —q ualc ula tion d epe nds, reciprocally, on the absent p resenc e
of nonc a lc ula t ion: p la c e s a n d p r oc e s s e s w he r e ma tter s a r e not s umm ed up ; p la c es
and processes where actions happen without the benefit of qualculation. Qualculation
always discovers its limits.
I t follows tha t the b ound ar y b e tw ee n the tw o is comp l ex . In one s ens e eac h is
i n c l ud e d i n t h e ot h e r e ve n w hi l e i t is b e i ng r ig or o us ly e x c l ud ed f r o m i t. Bu t w i t hin
this pattern of Othering there are endless variations. Is it the case, for example, that the
creation of nonqualculability is to be understood as a qualculative Machiavellian
p loy, the s tra te gy of thos e w ho wis h to ma nip ula te nonq ua lc ula tion? Wha tever the
merits of the cause for which the money is being raised, this is certainly a plausible
reading of the circumstances of the Téléthon: a calculative and possibly cynical manipulation to produce noncalculation. But this is only one empirical possibility. For
i n s t a nc e , d o w e r e a l l y w a n t t o ma ke th e s a m e c l a im f or th e s t r uc tu r a l ly s im i la r
c i r c u m s t a n c e s o f a Q u a k e r m e e t i n g f o r w o r s h i p ? D o w e w a n t t o s u g g es t t h a t i t s
a d vic e s , a nd t he c r e a t ion o f its s ile n t r oom , a mou nt t o c ynic a l ma n ip ula tion? T h e
question is, to be sure, empirical in character. The nonqualculability of such a space
could be—in some variants has bee n —cynica lly ma nip ula ted. But ther e is no g eneral
rule. Within the possibilities of proliferation and rarefaction, the relations between the
qualculable and the nonqualculable, intimate though they are, are variable, and in need
of e mpir ica l inve stigation. Cynic ism is only one p ossib ility among many.
A final thought. We have argued that both qualculation and
n o n q u a l c u l a t i o n are precarious and expensive. It is just as expensive to create
nonqualculability as it is qualculability. Here is a speculation: if investments in
qualculability increase it also becomes more costly to create nonqualculability.
Perhaps we are witnessing a historical process of escalation. Perhaps it gets more and
more difficult to keep qualculability and nonqualculability in equilibrium. At any rate,
proliferation of qualculability —but also, therefore, of nonqualculability is often
taken to be a contemporary predicament. As we have noted, qualculability escalations
turn up in the talk and practices of the audit society and the various discourses of
accountability. But, then, nonqualculability appears in the form of discourses about
‘postmodernism’, nonfoundationalism, and scepticism. If the two are necessary to
each other, necessary but Other to each other, we would expect to discover that
when one grows then so too does the other. 27
Acknowledgements.
We are grateful to Annemarie Mol, Ingunn Moser, Fabian Muniesa, and Vicky Singleton with
whom we have discussed many of the arguments developed in this paper. We are also
grateful to the anonymous referees of Society and Space, and to participants at the Workshop
on Boundaries: Materialities, Differences, Continuities, held at Lancaster University from
April 4–5, 2003, for their helpful questions and comments. Finally, we would like to thank the
Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, and the Centre for Technology Innovation
and Culture (TIK) at Oslo University, for financial support for the Workshop.
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1
Nonreason is Othered and productively Othered. See , for instance, Foucault (1971).
2
Our approach is therefore symmetrical with respect to the explicit and the implicit.
3
Callon and Muniesa (2003; see also 2002).
4
Cochoy (2002).
5
Callon and Muniesa (2003, page 2.
6
For discussion see Law and Mol (2001) and Law and Singleton (2005).
7
Boltanski and Thevenot (1987).
8
Greenwood (2000).
9
Gomart and Hennion (1999) and Hennion (2001).
10
Moser (2003).
11
London Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (1960, paragraph 258).
12
It is possible to think of the meeting as a method for detecting and enacting sets of
possibilities that are usually overwhelmed by the regularities enacted in mundane and discursively
dominant entanglements (see Law, 2004)
13
See the discussion in Boltanski (1990).
14
See Malinowski (1950). This is what Sahlins (1972) is suggesting when he distinguishes between
generalised and negative reciprocity. But the word `reciprocity ’ is misleading.
15
This is discussed at some length in Law (2004).
16
Porter (1995) and Power (1997).
17
Moser and Law (2003), Pols (2003), and Singleton (2005).
18
Giddens (1990).
19
Callon (1998) and MacKenzie (2004).
20
Cullen (2001). For fuller discussion see Law and Mol (2002).
21
It is a commonplace in the literatures on safety that safety systems, which tend to increase
complexity and add to unpredictability, may lead to accidents. For a technic ally oriented
version of the argument see Perrow (1999).
22
On SSK see, for instance, Collins (1985) and Latour and Woolgar (1986).
23
Mol (2002).
24
Cardon et al (1999).
25
For discussion see Latour (1996).
26
Cardon et al (1999).
27
For discussion in the context of risk see the papers collected together in Lash et al (1996),
and in particular Beck (1996) and Wynne (1996).