Numerical Difference. Toward a Sociology of (Quantitative) Comparisons

Heintz B. Numerische Differenz. Überlegungen zu einer Soziologie des (quantitativen) Vergleichs. Zeitschrift für Soziologie. 2010;39(3):162-181.In this contribution comparisons are considered to be elementary social forms, and they are analyzed within a communication-theoretical perspective. Across different media of communication, comparisons are expressed linguistically, numerically, or visually, and this differentiation is the focus of the present investigation. The use of numbers, visual representations, and language each affects communication in a particular manner, and quantification is particularly effective in promoting the acceptance of communication. This effectiveness corresponds to what is here termed the "numerical difference," a difference illustrated by the ubiquitous use of quantitative comparisons drawn from statistics, rankings, or ratings. In the first part of the paper elementary characteristics of comparisons and their communicativeness are discussed. In the second part, the differentiation of linguistic, visual, and numerical media is utilized in order to investigate how the form of messages may influence the likelihood of their acceptance. These observations are related to of issues of globalization in the third part of the paper, where they are discussed with respect to concepts employed by studies of diffusion within the new institutionalism