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Short abstract:

I shall critically interrogate the trope that "mathematics is everywhere" and consider alternative models for public and practitioner understanding of mathematics derived from social studies of the locations of (and processes of relocating) mathematical knowledge and practice.

Long abstract:

The trope that “mathematics is everywhere” has been a pervasive component of both public and practitioner discourses about mathematics, its role in the world, and its claims to sociopolitical and scholarly importance. When UNESCO launched the annual International Day of Mathematics “worldwide celebration” on 14 March, 2020, “mathematics is everywhere” was chosen as the inaugural theme. A contemporary legacy of a centuries-long history of mathematization of the sociomaterial world, this trope and companion discourses (for instance the idea of “hidden mathematics” in commonplace objects and experiences) have misleadingly naturalized mathematical theories and applications while counterproductively distracting from place-based accounts of the production and mobilization of mathematical meaning. I shall offer a critical interrogation of the genealogy and effects of the “mathematics is everywhere” trope and examine how a critical study of the location of mathematical knowledge and practice provides not just a more sociologically and historically appropriate account of mathematics but also a better foundation for public and practitioner understanding of the discipline, capable of speaking to the role of mathematics in the production of social inequality and of social inequality in the production of mathematics. My account draws especially from my research on the history of globalization of mathematics, and of the persistence of place and particularity in the negotiation of putatively universal mathematical knowledges and practices.