Standards: Recipes for reality

Everyone is confronted with standards every day. Lawrence Busch, Professor at Michigan State University, argues that standards, shape not only the physical world around us but also our social lives and even our selves. Busch shows how standards are intimately connected to power–that they often serve to empower some and disempower others.

Busch recently conducted a research project on standards which aimed at:

1. Developing a general theory of standards.
2. Documenting the shift of governance from nation-states to various and diverse forms of private and private-public governance.
3. Better linking standards to (a) ethics, and (b) democracy.

The book “Standards. Recipes for reality” came out of his research and was recently published at MIT Press. You can listen to Busch discussing his book in this Podcast.

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