Alain Desrosières and the Parisian Flock: social studies of quantification in France since the 1970s

Abstract

Alain Desrosières has played a central role in the French intellectual scene from the 1980s to today for his theories of quantification. In this article, I trace his career and that of his contemporary Parisian scene in three steps: first, the period when he was associated to Pierre Bourdieu; second, the one when he became part of what we propose to call a flock of scholars all working on the qualification of reality; and finally, the one when Desrosières was associated with the Centre Koyré d’histoire des sciences. Finally, we use statistics to analyze the extent of the international reception of his work.