The downs and ups of the consumer price index in Argentina: From National Statistics to Big Data

Authors

  • Celia Lury University of Warwick
  • Ana Gross University of Warwick

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1285/i20356609v7i2p258

Keywords:

big data, consumer price index, controversy, experiment, national statistic, price

Abstract

On the 5th of February 2007, the Institute of National Statistics and Census in Argentina (INDEC) released a press statement, giving a percentage figure for that month’s Consumer Price Index (CPI-GBA). Since the announcement, this number and its subsequent variations have been at the centre of a national and international political, legal and technical controversy. The legitimacy of the numerical value of the percentage has been called into question by a range of actors and has been challenged by the emergence of multiple alternative indicators of inflation. We explore this methodological controversy through the lens of statactivism. We do not describe the controversy in its entirety, but, rather, enter the controversy to develop a comparison of the procedures informing the production of the CPI as a national statistic with those informing its production as a big data number. In both cases, we explore the way in which price is produced as an indicator. In doing so we draw attention to the significance of calculative infrastructures as ubiquitous, multi-layered processes of connectivity, that have the capacity to make surfaces, to draw lines and boundaries, and to enable particular economic and political activities to unfold in multiple and specific ways. We argue that the capacity to connect, to attach and detach, that is immanent to such infrastructures configures price as an indicator in particular ways, and in doing so help make what we call state space, a term which we use to draw attention to how specific configurations of connectivity in the calculative infrastructure enacts a space of possibility for statactivism

Author Biographies

Celia Lury, University of Warwick

Celia Lury is Professor and Director and Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. She is currently studying the ways in which methods, metrics and models enact the social world. Recent publications include, Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social, co-edited with Nina Wakeford, Routledge, 2012.

Ana Gross, University of Warwick

Ana Gross is a PhD Candidate at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick and a visiting student at the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process (CSISP), Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her doctorate is currently funded by the Economic and Social research Council (ESRC).

References

Asdal K. and Moser I. (2012), “Experiments in Context and Contexting”, Science, Technology and Human Values, Vol. 37 (4): 291-306, DOI: 10.1177/0162243912449749

Becker V. A. (2013), “The 2010 Census and the “Militant Statistic”, Radical Statistics Issue 108: 56-57.

Berumen E. and Becker V. A. (2011), “Recent Developments in Price and Related Statistics in Ar-gentina”, Statistical Journal of the International Association of Official Statistics 27: 7-11.

Beunza D., Hardie I. and MacKenzie D. (2006), “A Price is a Social Thing: Towards a Material So-ciology of Arbitrage”, Organization Studies Vol. 27 (5): 721-745, doi: 10.1177/0170840606065923

Bollier, D. (2010), The Promises and Peril of Big Data, Washington: The Aspen Institute.

Bowker, G. C. and Star, S. L. (1999) Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences, Cambridge (Massachusetts): MIT Press.

Bruno I., Didier E., Vitale T. (2014), “ Statactivism: forms of action between disclosure and affir-mation”, Partecipazione e conflitto. The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies, 7(2), doi: 10.1285/i20356609v7i1p

Callon, M. (1981), “Struggles and Negotiations to Define What is Problematic and What is Not: The Socio-logic of Translation”, in Knorr W.R., Krohn R. and Whitley R.P. (Eds.), The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, pp. 197-221.

Cavallo, Alberto (2010), Scraped Data and Sticky Prices, PhD Thesis, MIT Sloan.

Cavallo, Alberto (2012), Online and Official Price Indexes: Measuring Argentina’s Inflation, Jour-nal of Monetary Economics, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jmoneco.2012.10.002

Collier, S. (2009), “Topologies of Power: Foucault’s Analysis of Political Government beyond ‘Governmentality’”, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 10 (6): 78-108, doi: 10.1177/0263276409347694

Day, S., Lury, C. and Wakeford, N. (Eds.) (2014 forthcoming), “Numbering: ecologies and compo-sition”, Distinktion Special Issue, Number Ecologies: Numbers and Numbering Practices.

DeLanda, M. (2005), Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, London: Continuum.

Deleuze, G. (2004), Difference and Repetition, London: Continuum.

Desrosières, A. (1998), The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning, Cam-bridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press.

Didier, Emmanuel (2005), Releasing Market Statistics, in Latour B. and Weibel P. (Eds.), Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, Cambridge (Massachusetts): MIT Press.

Esposito, E. (2013) “Economic Circularities and Second-Order Observation: The Reality of Rat-ings”, Sociologica, 2, Doi: 10.2383/74851

Fraser, M. (2009), “Standards, Populations, and Difference”, Cultural Critique, 71: 47-80, doi: 10.1353/cul.0.0032

Guyer, J. (2006), “Composites, fictions and risk: towards an ethnography of price”, in C. Hann and K. Hart (Eds.), Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today, Cambirdge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 203-220.

Guyer, J. (2010), “The Eruption of Tradition: On Ordinality and Calculation”, Anthropological Theory, Vol. 10 (1): 1-9, doi: 10.1177/ 1463499610365378

Hurwitz, A. (1962), ‘Constants and Compromise in the Consumer Price Index’, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Volume 57 (13): 813-825

Latour, B. (1999), Pandora’s Hope: An Essay on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge (Mas-sachusetts): Harvard University Press.

Lindemboim, J. (2013), Discourse, Legislation and Data in Argentina, Radical Statistics Issue 108: 54-56.

MACOSPOL, Mapping Controversies of Science for Politics,

http://www.mappingcontroversies.net, last accessed 29th October 213.

Marres, N. and Weltevrede, E. (2013), “Scraping the Social? Issues in Live Social Research”, Journal of Cultural Economy Vol. 6 (3):313-335, doi: 10.1080/17530350.2013.772070

Muniesa, F. (2007), “Market Technologies and the Pragmatics of Price”, Economy and Society Vol. 36 (3): 377-395, doi: 0.1080/03085140701428340

Pardo-Guerra, J.P. (2010), “Creating Flows of Interpersonal Bits: The Automation of the London Stock Exchange”, c.1955-90, Economy and Society Vol. 39 (1): 84-109, doi: 10.1080/03085140903424584

Stark, David (2013) ‘Observing Finance as a Network of Observation’, Sociologica, 2, doi: 10.2383/74854.

Thrift, N (2005), Knowing Capitalism, London: Sage.

Zikopoulos, P., Eaton, C., DeRoos, D., Deutsch, T. and Lapis, G. (2012), Understanding Big Data: Analytics for Enterprise Class Hadoop and Streaming Data, eBook: IBM Corporation.

Downloads

Published

07-07-2014

Issue

Vol. 7, No. 2 (2014). Special issue: Statistics and Activism

Section

Special Issue

License

Authors who publish with PACO agree to the Creative Commons Attribution-Non commercial-Share alike 3.0 Italian License

Copyrights of each article are hold by the University of Salento.

PACO allows author(s) to retain publishing rights under permission of the Editorial Staff. But Authors are requested to always indicate that the first version of the article has been published in "Partecipazione e conflitto".