Provincializing Impact

From Imperial Anxiety to Algorithmic Universalism

Bibliographic Data

ID3924799
AuthorsAlex Csiszar (corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume38
Pages103-126
Publication date2023-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueOsiris (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0369-7827 • E-ISSN: 1933-8287
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/725131
OpenAlexW4383743597
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited22

During the Cold War bibliometrics took on a privileged role in the discourse of global scientific development. This essay locates a key condition of possibility for this development in the consolidation of the “international scientific literature” at the turn of the twentieth century through international bureaucratic projects that were fueled by European imperial anxieties. When citation analysis emerged in this political context in the 1960s and 1970s, it was commitments to largely qualitative criteria—regarding open communication, universality, and standards of peer review—that sustained their legitimacy. The conditions of possibility for what has now come to be seen as a form of epistemic injustice by algorithm has as much to do with craft as code. Attending to this historical genealogy is crucial if we wish to better understand the nature of more recent forms of algorithm discrimination

Bureaucracy · Epistemology · Injustice · Legitimacy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Twentieth Century Scientific Developments