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Paper short abstract:

Through two cases we examine the pervasive presence of ‘the count’ and the corresponding compulsion to (re)produce singular figurings of collective and communal life. Using a feminist (ac)counting, we consider the possibilities of a different kind of critter—new more generative worlds of multiples.

Paper long abstract:

This paper reviews two cases that have community at their heart. The first revolves around the value of counting in and for the academic community. In 2015, the UK conducted an independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management. It introduced the concept of responsible metrics within a framework of responsible open-access. These terms have, if anything, drawn out the inherent frictions between qualitative and quantitative measures, numbers and narrative. Relatedly, they point to a misalignment between individual metrics and peer review, and counting structures that narrowly define the academic community around select groups while marginalising others—namely early career researchers and women. The second is concerned with how a prevailing count is precipitating deep structural changes to collective and communal life in the UK. Shaping UK housing policy, we'll discuss how measures of credit/wealth, labour and time offer not just an alluring machinery for prediction, but also a self-referential logic for controlling how and where people prosper.

Although very different, these two examples will be used to invite different ways of (ac)counting, ones that might resist all too singular ideas of community. In the first, we'll consider current moves beyond the fallacy of responsible metrics, such as the evaluation of feminist impact and the possibilities that open-access and metrics afford for a global feminist commons. In the second, we'll discuss women's encounters with the infrastructures of data production/distribution on a London housing estate, and collective attempts to intervene in how communities might come to count.