Transactional Politics

Mike Savage. The University of Manchester & Evelyn Ruppert, The Open University

The row over MPs expenses reflects much about the current practice of identifying and knowing people on the basis of their transactions, on what they do rather than what they say.  It also shows in practice how Web-2.0 applications such as Crowdsourcing, Google Docs, mash-ups and visualization software can be used to mobilize collective and popular projects. Basic analytic tools freely available on the Web enable people to access and analyse data and do their own analyses and representations of phenomena.  In this paper we examine popular mobilizations related to MPs expenses and the TheyWorkForYou project to think about how these devices represent a new politics of measurement.  We argue that these devices challenge expert knowledge through the formation of new informational gatekeepers and organizers; introduce a new politics of visualization based on the manipulation of huge data bases into simplified visual arrays; involve the re-orientation of accounts of the social from elicited attitudes and views to transactions and practices; and, mobilize the inspection of individuals arrayed in relation to other individuals within whole (sub)populations.