La "medida" de lo posible. Cuantificación y esfera pública en Chile

Abstract

The modern world is mostly made up of societies that know and model themselves through numbers. This study focuses on the processes that are behind this general tendency in the Chilean reality. Although the increasing use of quantification is directly related to general patterns modernity and globalization, the particular nature of the process of democratic transition in Chile in the 1980s and 1990s have tended to strengthen even further the use of measurement mechanisms in society. The key words of the transition process were responsibility and governability, to avoid a confrontation climate that, as it is usually explained, was one of the causes of the 1973 coup which destroyed the old Chilean democracy. That is why during the transition, the political elite tried to develop a public sphere where the demands could be minimized and people's participation could be directed through specific institutionalized channels. In that sense, quantification was coherent with those objectives and the intensity of its use can be seen as a tool -among others- for the upbringing of a limited and graduated public sphere.