Michael Power

Accounting and Science

Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason
Herausgeber: Brown, William; Power, Michael; Child, John

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

In recent years policy makers and scientists have become increasingly interested in the economics of science, and in particular in the relationship between accounting and science. This book, originally published as a special issue of the journal Science in Context, explores the intersections between the sociology and history of science and the sociology of accounting. Using a truly interdisciplinary approach the book draws attention to the constitutive role that practices of economic calculation in general, and of accounting in particular, play for the conduct of science and for the forms of economic life within which science is embedded. The contributors explore a number of issues, including the role of accounting as a distinctive form of administrative objectivity; conceptual exchanges between science and business administration; actuarial practices and their claims to scientificity; conceptions of the factory as a form of laboratory; accounting for research and development expenditure; the emerging role of patents in the physical sciences; and models of scientific accountability. One recurrent theme throughout the book is the manner in which forms of accounting practice construct possibilities for thought and action.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 312
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Oktober 2009
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 509g
• ISBN-13: 9780521556996
• ISBN-10: 0521556996
• Artikelnr.: 22269164

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword: The flat-earthers of social theory Bruno Latour; 1. From the
science of accounts to the financial accountability of science Michael
Power; 2. Making things quantitative Theodore M. Porter; 3. Natural and
artificial budgets: accounting for Goethe's economy of nature Myles W.
Jackson; 4. A calculating profession: Victorian actuaries among the
statisticians Timothy L. Alborn; 5. The factory as laboratory Peter Miller
and Ted O'Leary; 6. Connecting science to the economic: accounting
calculation and the visibility of research and development Keith Robson; 7.
Governing science: patents and public sector science Brad Sherman; 8. On
customers and costs: a story from public sector science John Law and
Madeleine Akrich; 9. A visible hand in the marketplace of ideas: precision
measurement as arbitrage Philip Mirowski; 10. Towards a philosophy of
science accounting: a critical rendering of instrumental rationality Steve
Fuller; Index.