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Political Economy of the Ordinal Society

The Centre for Research on Social Inequalities and the médialab (both Sciences Po) are pleased to welcome Marion Fourcade for a discussion on her latest book, "The Ordinal Society", co-authored with Kieran Healy (Duke University).

Event, Research Seminar

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Salle K.011, 1 place Saint Thomas d'Aquin 75007 Paris

Our society increasingly relies on an invisible network of numbers,  scores, and digital categories. It is through this interpretive framework that institutions observe, evaluate, and direct us, shaping our daily lives down to their most intimate aspects. 

In her presentation, Marion Fourcade will demonstrate how the atomization of human experience into analyzable data streams has changed the process of capital accumulation, facilitated a deeper penetration of financial logics into our lived experience, and supported the emergence of insidious forms of social  competition, moral judgments, and inequality.

Marion Fourcade is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Social Science Matrix at the University of California, Berkeley. She has authored "Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s" (Princeton University Press, 2009) and "The Ordinal Society" (with Kieran Healy, Harvard University Press 2024), among numerous articles focused on economic sociology and the sociology of knowledge.

“Under  digital capitalism, social interaction itself has become the target of  private appropriation and capital accumulation. Marion Fourcade and  Kieran Healy show how sociality has been corralled and monetized in the  ordinal society—a society that may soon prove to be unbearable to most. A  must-read.” —Thomas Piketty, author of A Brief History of Equality

Speakers 

Sylvain Parasie (Director of the médialab, Professor of Sociology at Sciences Po)   

Marion Fourcade (Director of the Social Science Matrix at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor of Sociology) 

Practical information

The session will take place on Thursday, May 22, 2025, from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM, in person at Sciences Po, Room K011, 1 Place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin, Paris 75007.