Standards and their stories : how quantifying, classifying, and formalizing practices shape everyday life / edited by Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Star.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-233) and index.

Reckoning with standards / Susan Leigh Star and Martha Lampland -- Beyond the standard human? / Steven Epstein -- Age in standards and standards for age : institutionalizing chronological age as biographical necessity / Judith Treas -- Double standards : the history of standardizing humans in modern life insurance / Martin Lengwiler -- Classifying laborers : instinct, property, and the psychology of productivity in Hungary (1920-1956) / Martha Lampland -- Metadata standards : trajectories and enactment in the life of an ontolgy / Florence Millerand and Geoffrey C. Bowker -- ASCII imperialism / Daniel Pargman and Jacob Palme.

Standardization is one of the defining aspects of modern life, its presence so pervasive that it is usually taken for granted. However cumbersome, onerous, or simply puzzling certain standards may be, their fundamental purpose in streamlining procedures, regulating behaviors, and predicting results is rarely questioned. Indeed, the invisibility of infrastructure and the imperative of standardizing processes signify.