Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

In a list of 17 high-income countries, the United States ranks last in terms of life expectancy for males and second-to-last for females. The U.S. population also experiences worse outcomes compared with its peers in nine key areas: infant mortality and low birth weight; injuries and homicides; adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections; HIV and AIDS; drug- related deaths; obesity and diabetes; heart disease; chronic lung disease; and disability. In addition, the United States sees persistent racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic disparities in health.

Why does the United States fare so poorly compared with its peers? There are many possible …

What happens when more-than-human digital acts tell us something about ourselves? This article examines the ways in which the algorithms of data analytics function in relation to other ontologies and assemblages and how they are shaping and forming our lives. Beginning by critically questioning the ontology of data, data are argued to be an assemblage that is materially and discursively produced from a multiplicity of apparatuses including sociopolitical relations of power and “difference.” The concept of algo-ritmo—that is, the repetition of data with alterity—is introduced as a way of understanding how the performative acts of the “soft(ware) thinking” of algorithms …

The belief in the methods of quantification has not been widely shared in cultural studies. On the one hand, the dominant orientation of quantitative social science research continues to hold on to positivist assumptions of objectivity and the privileged access to the “truths” of natural phenomena via the logics of mathematics. On the other hand, cultural studies has maintained a hermeneutics of suspicion toward the methods of quantification. But, to what extent does this suspicion toward quantitative inquiry compromise the deconstructive project of cultural studies by falling into the trap of the quantitative/qualitative and, related, nature/culture binaries? Building on new …

Introduction to special issue.

This article demonstrates an alternative ontological and epistemological approach to critical

inquiry with quantitative methods. By building on new materialists thought, the critical

possibilities of quantification are reconsidered via a diffractive methodology. By diffractively

reading through multiple sources of data the article demonstrates how to critically analyze the

multiplicity of “difference” in parenting practices. The diffracted results point toward the ways

in which parenting practices are a result of myriad forces that cannot be reduced to pathology or

deficiency but rather convey the inheritance of constraining and disenabling sociocultural and

historical conditions. Concluding remarks suggests the quantitative turn for critical …