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Exposing Indicators' Fragility: Sally Engle Merry's Contribution to the Study of Governance Indicators

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Andrea Boggio*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Social Sciences, Bryant University, 1150 Douglas Pike, Smithfield (RI), 02917, USA
*
Please direct all correspondence to Andrea Boggio, Department of History and Social Sciences, Bryant University, 1150 Douglas Pike, Smithfield (RI), 02917, USA. e-mail: aboggio@bryant.edu.

Extract

The work done by Sally Engle Merry around governance indicators provides a clear example of how her scholarship has been original and impactful. She devoted more than a decade to studying the emergence and use of indicators, a widely used strategy for assessing governance mechanisms. Her body of work on indicators includes three books and more than a dozen journal articles and book chapters. These contributions have reshaped the discourse and forced readers to confront the hidden truth about indicators: their imperfect nature as with any other human construct. I, selfishly, have borrowed from her work and used her lenses in contributing to the study and production of human rights indicators. I see my borrowing as a tribute to a must-read scholar whose ideas are worth entertaining and sharing through our work.

Type
In Memoriam: Tributes to Sally Engle Merry
Copyright
© 2020 Law and Society Association.

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References

Nelken, David, “Conclusion. Contesting Global Indicators,” in The Quiet Power of Indicators: Measuring Governance, Corruption, and Rule of Law, eds. Merry, Sally Engle, Davis, Kevin E., and Kingsbury, Benedict (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 326.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas and Miller, Peter. 2013. Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, “General Comment No. 25 on Science and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Art. 15.1.b, 15.2, 15.3 and 15.4, E/C.12/GC/25,” 2020, 88.Google Scholar