Deborah Stone, Counting: How we Use Numbers to Decide What Matters (New York: Liveright, 2021). 312 pp. $26,95 (Hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-63149-592-2

In times of big data, algorithmic societies (Schuilenburg and Peeters 2020), artificial intelligence, running COVID-19 numbers on hospitalized patients, we are everyday confronted with the increasing urgency and importance how we use numbers. Especially, since our governments rely on “objectifiable facts,” reflexive understanding about how numbers come into being is much needed. This is exactly where the new book of Deborah Stone comes in, as she introduces in the beginning that “in order to counts one must decide what counts.” That means what we count has meaning and value. Therefore, every counting activity is a judgment instead of a neutral activity. Since “a number is only the period at the end of a life story. We don't really know what a number means until someone brings it to life” (p. 65). With this book, Stone enlivens numbers.

This book draws our attention to counting as a meaning-making practice. It is about “how we use numbers to decide what matters” as the subtitle suggests. And since not a single number “tells its own story,” we are in dire need to understand how numbers are the so-called objective, neutral or trustworthy devices of persuasive stories and narratives. This has special importance in the realm of public policy making and speaks to the heart of the expertise and well-known work of Deborah Stone. As a renowned scholar in the field, known for her work on policy making as storytelling, she has paved the way for many social constructivist, interpretive, and critical scholars studying practices of policy making and politics. In that sense, this book epitomizes more fundamentally her work on policy making, as a social practice of decisions and determinations. Since already in her book on the “Policy Paradox,” she included that “numbers, in fact, work exactly like metaphors” (1988, 165). But also in her book on disability (Stone 1984) shows that disability is not an “objective medical phenomenon of taking X-rays,” but about people deciding about deservingness. Therefore, one could argue that her oeuvre comes together in this book, now showing that numbers are not neutral devices but moral judgments. This has major value to the field of policy making and policy science because “even today, most policy analysis assumes that once you've made a count of some phenomenon and you present a percentage, say, your number is real. Scholars gloss over what is behind categorizing things that made it possible for you to come up with that number” (van Ostaijen and Jhagroe, 2015: 130).

The book positions itself in a long-standing tradition of qualitative contributions on the quantitatively side of (democratic and public) life (Desrosières 1998). It relates to the politics of numbers (Van Ostaijen and Scholten 2017), why we “trust in numbers” (Porter 1995), to what extend numbers contribute to a “rhetoric of objectivity” (van Leeuwen 2007), the significance about “modes of relating” (Mol 2011) or more generally how states make societies legible (Scott 2008). The book includes seven chapters in which convincingly the argument is illustrated. That argument can be summarized to the extent that every number is a judgment and a “moral choice,” since statistics are “always accessory to a purpose.” But it shows how in the process of making “we make numbers and numbers make us” since “what our numbers do to others, they do to us as well.” It is this interrelational and performative perspective which sticks. And therefore, it includes a call to treat numbers in humble ways because “we need humility […] to help us count better” (p. 218).

Stone shows that counting, as a verb, is a (wo)man-made activity, but especially, since it is more and more outsourced (by algorithms or AI), we cannot underestimate that numbers always contain judgments, assumptions, and moral choices about the good life. She starts her argument by illustrating how children are taught to count. This is done by the simple formula to “judge this as that.” Therefore, counting is always a comparative exercise, to classify, and therefore “numbers are like metaphors.” And particularly in such a comparative exercise, counting is about power. Because the only way to count is “to force things into categories by ignoring their differences” (p. 3). The book is at its best when it comes close to that power question since Stone analyzes numbers in an almost Durkheimian way because: “Numbers acquire their power the same way the gods acquire theirs—humans invest them with virtues they want their rules to have. […] Our numbers, like our gods, promise to govern us well” (p. 101). This is also why we need “to hold numbers accountable as we do our judges.” Focusing on the power dimension questions ourselves, the ones who attribute power to numbers. And it questions the democratic accountability and authority of those counting devices who count in the name of us.

This power question links closely to literature in the field highlighting the narrative potential of numbers, metaphors, and myths (Rein and Schön 1977; van Hulst and Yanow 2016; Van Ostaijen 2017). In the book, she includes numerous examples of how numbers “get their clout” and come into being. Sometimes, the book turns into a textbook how surveys are made-up of implicit assumptions, and why we should be cautious about how such numbers come into being. Because in creating categories, things always get lost and are added, as others have shown (Jasanoff 2004; Latour 1999). It is this practice of slotting or category-making that has the interest of many and should make us susceptible of how public administrations make up the world they steer (Schneider and Ingram 1997; Yanow 2015). The book includes some infamous examples of how Hispanics are historically treated in the national census, how race became a category, how Lincoln Constitutionally rated slaves “as a three-fifth of a person” and why there was a sudden steep increase in COVID-19 numbers in New York City State administration. The book also reflects extensively on GDP figures, poverty rates, and evidence why currently “some other race” is “the third largest ‘race’ in the US census.” Moreover, it provides examples of “mathematical intimidation” and why cost–benefit analysis “put a math gloss on giving powerful people the right to continue harming other people” (p. 214). Especially, these in-depth illustrations and cases about how numbers come into being are illuminating and are the most convincing part of the book.

But it goes further. Since Stone also shows how algorithms or something like predictive policing is “something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.” If one expects certain unwanted behavior in a certain (spatial, social, or cultural) area, it is quite likely that the occurrence of that behavior gets counted. By counting, that behavior counts. Counting is not a descriptive act like the selective attention experiments (like the famous one with a gorilla in a basketball group), showing us that you can only see something when you are aware of it. No, counting is a performative and self-referential act. Just like a FitBit, since “the process of counting changes the count” (p. 231). Wearing a FitBit does not only make you aware of your movement. The FitBit has agency since it induces your movement. Stone shows various examples which go beyond the descriptive, neutral, objective reality of numbers but unfold the performative, self-referential feedback loops that feed the purpose of the numbers that have been counted. This performative act is known and shown in many literature studies, but Stone adds lively examples here which add up to our picture and question the legitimacy how certain numbers come into being and become “important judges” in creating norms and deviancy our social life.

While the book is accessible for a large public, this book could particularly be interesting for public administration scholars, legal, policy, and political science scholars since all the empirical examples stay close to governmental interventions, public data collection, and democratic institutions. Also, since analyzing counting and numbering is a means or instrument for Stone to show how social justice is distributed. She offers us insights into key questions of moral philosophy and public ethics, confronting us with moral dilemmas between utilitarian and deontological ethics. Especially, in democracies, which mostly invests particular importance in the largest number and focuses on how big numbers gain clout (the majority), protecting the value of small numbers (minorities) speaks to the heart of our democratic rule of law, and debates on distributive and social justice. This is why the book will spark the interest of many legal, public, and political scholars in the field.

One could critically argue that this metaphorical perspective on numbers is hardly novel, also regarding her own work (1984; 1988) and that numerous studies have progressed in showing the performative effect of such legible devices. Many fields have emerged such as Science and Technology Studies (STS), Actor Network Theory (ANT), or Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Callon 2010; Kempeneer and Van Dooren 2021; Law 2009), which has resulted in many theoretically and empirically contributions and which have progressed our thinking about the authorative value and performative act of numbers in numerous ways (Butler 2021). Others would maybe criticize the theory-light framework of the book, highlighting the absence of references to these literature studies. I think that does harm to the aim of the book in twofold.

First, such criticism does not contextualize the book in the broader work of this author. Stone herself indicated once that her work focuses more on empirical data than “abstract theories” as: “I try to state theory in plain English, and I don't say anything theoretical that I can't illustrate.” And related to her other book: “The Samaritan's Dilemma is also meant to address us as academics. I think that social sciences in general and political science in particular have become so theoretical that they don't speak to other people. If we try to tell other people what our work is about, we can't because we've been trained not to talk in everyday language” (van Ostaijen & Jhagroe, 2015: 133). Therefore, I think the theoretical contribution is therefore hidden in empirical illustrations, showing and confronting us with specific accounts on power, authority, and questions of social and distributive justice. Not binding this work to a rigid theoretical framework enables to unfold a rich variety of empirical cases that speak to the heart of an interdisciplinary scholarship on counting, with relevance to public administration, policy, legal, and political sciences.

Second, I think we might value more that this work is written as an accessible book for a broad audience. This book is a public endeavor or public-sociological (Burawoy 2005) book, accessible for a large audience of interested readers. It hardly assumes expert knowledge. Therefore, hardliners could question to what extend this is a must read for PA scholars. But I would argue it does. Not only because of its content but also by this public form, reminding us of the art and craft of creating publicly accessible books for a broad audience that legitimates our scientific work and speak to the heart of our disciplines. Such endeavors are in the current publish-or-perish culture a laudable exercise. The book is, as many other parts of her work, among a select group of works in the social sciences that succeeds in being tenacious in pursuit of detail, thoroughly logical and entertaining (Frankfather 1985). To me it is a marking moment that hopefully opens opportunities for a more public administration (Schillemans 2017). I count on others to make that performative statement countable.