Einstein once said: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
A while back, when I was considering going back to school to do a PhD in political science, I faced a sad reality. That reality was the fact that rational choice, econometrics and quantitative analysis are taking over—and in many cases have already taken over—the discipline of political science in nearly all American universities. There is not much space for ideas and thoughts anymore. Numbers should be the basis for every word that comes out of a political scientist’s mouth.
I then went to an African country where there is plethora of humanitarian and development aid work. There, I was “lucky” enough to be thrown right in the middle of numbers and digits—I took over a job that was focused on research, monitoring and evaluation of aid programs. I observed how donors and as a result humanitarian agencies have also completely given in to the idea that as long as we have numbers we are set to claim anything. No one questions what those numbers really contain: when we talk about 2 apples or 2 lives, the “2” hold more importance that the qualifying noun that follows. As long as we have a solid digit, we are good to go.
Then a young, bright friend of mine (and when I say young, I am talking 19-20 years old) sent me an email asking for advice on a plan she has to bring about social change. She is in the process of acquiring some funding and wanted to know how much it costs to bring about “one unit of social change.” She wanted to be able to measure everything with the same metric so that she can decide where she should put her money and energy to have a greater effect on humanity. And she is all heart, so I did try to help her see how she is getting caught up with the monetization and quantification discourse that the donor community is advocating for. It was then that the term quantivitis came to my head.
“But isn’t this phenomenon stemming from the same “natural” and “human” desire of simplifying things?” one might ask. My answer is yes! People love simplifying things so that they can understand it. We prefer to use our metric to measure every human act and interaction. My problem with this “natural” inclination, however, is the fact that the world has been screwed up time after time because of this inclination:
- Wasn’t it the same “human” tendency that led the Europeans of 18th and 19th century to “simplify” the story of Africa by explaining everything using their dull-witted Hamitic hypothesis? This hypothesis helped people like John Hanning Speke to put the African population into two categories: the light skinned and tall ones (who resembled the European race) and the flat-nosed and stocky ones who were called the “primitive race.” In his idiotic theory, Speke spelled out how the native Africans are the decedents of Ham (Noah’s naughty son who according to Genesis 9 was cursed by Noah to bear slaves as children—i.e. Canaan) and the cultured ones are from the higher race that originated from Noah himself (and originally settled in Ethiopia). As my brief explanation of the “race science”—which is the mother of today’s anthropology—shows, the “human” inclination to simplify have led the pioneer of this so called “science” to minimize the story of race, and later ethnicity, to mere physical characteristics. But this simplification had far reaching consequences that stretches out to today. As an example lets fast forward to 1994, Kigali, Rwanda: Hutu* power militias called “interahamwe” orchestrated a wipe out of the Tutsis** primarily based on physical denominations that people like Speke drew up.
Note: I should mention that I am not trying to portray the Hamitic hypothesis or the “race science” as the sole reason for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, but rather as a factor that facilitated it to a great extent. The entire history of 19th and 20th century Rwanda has been a recipe for disaster. As I don’t have the intention of deconstructing the Rwandan history in a search for the root of the genocide in this piece, I would like to refer you to Mahmood Mamdani, a highly respected Africa scholar and academic, and Philip Gourevitch, an acclaimed investigative journalist, who have written extensively on this topic.
- Wasn’t it the same “human” tendency that led many political philosophers and political economists such as Lionel Robbins and John Maynard Keynes to pioneer the separation of the idea of politics from the “science” of economics in the early days of the 20th century? This simplification was followed by another simplification that was the idea of financial market. It shrunk the entire political, social and cultural factors that impact economical functions and financial interactions into simple numbers and graphs. This enabled a “simple man” to find out how the economy is working just by looking at the Dow Jones Industrial Average reports. One could look at other indices to find out where s/he should invest to generate more wealth for his or herself. The pure numbers created the illusion for the world that what they were looking at represented generation of new wealth and thus no one had any moral problem with part taking in this pandemonium of exploitation and rip off. The result was not only a poorer mass and a richer few, but also a financial crisis that made—and still makes--millions suffer from extreme poverty and indignity. The numbers that Dow has been putting out had no indication of how every dollar made on Wall Street is a one meal less for a poor family in the little town of Pweto in the province of Katanga in eastern Congo. The figures that Chevron put out to show its sky rocketing profits were stripped of any connection with the industry workers who were shot dead by the Nigerian military (paid by Chevron) in Niger delta only because they asked for compensation for the destruction of their communities by the oil industry.
To close, I would like to suggest that we take a critical approach towards the phenomenon of “quantivitis.” Quantitative approach to explaining the world can potentially make life very easy for academics and practitioners and thus has many advocates. We are, therefore, being pushed to an extreme in favor of the use of quantitative methods in academia, business and humanitarian world. It gives everyone a metric with which every phenomenon in the world can be explained. It, however, shifts the emphasis from the real subject to the digit that makes the subject quantifiable. One ought to look beyond the façade of figures and graphs (that can certainly be helpful to an extent) if one aspires to get a grasp of reality.
ps: a very good friend of mine reminded me of the following passage from the epic book of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Little Prince (Le Petite Prince). I am in love with this piece of Exupery's book. But for some reason when I was writing yesterday, I failed to remember it (shame on me!). But I am sure in my unconscious, the little prince was helping me write. Many thanks to my lovely friend for reminding me of this.
"Les grandes personnes aiment les chiffres. Quand vous leur parlez d'un nouvel ami, elles ne vous questionnent jamais sur l'essentiel. Elles ne vous disent jamais: "Quel est le son de sa voix ? Quels sont les jeux qu'il préfère ? Est-ce qu'il collectionne les papillons ?" Elles vous demandent: "Quel âge a-t-il ? Combien a-t-il de frères ? Combien pèse-t-il ? Combien gagne son père ?" Alors seulement elles croient le connaître. Si vous dites aux grandes personnes: "J'ai vu une belle maison en briques roses, avec des géraniums aux fenêtres et des colombes sur le toit..." elles ne parviennent pas à s'imaginer cette maison. Il faut leur dire: "J'ai vu une maison de cent mille francs." Alors elles s'écrient: "Comme c'est joli !" "
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* “Hutu” is an ethnicity that resides mostly in Rwanda and Zaire (or today’s Democratic Republic of Congo). This ethnicity presents most of the physical characteristics that Speke and his successors described as the characteristics of the “primitive race.”
** “Tutsi” is another ethnicity, mostly found in the region of African great lakes. Tutsis constitute a minority in Rwanda. Nearly a million Tutsis were massacred by their Hutu neighbors and family members in the matter of three months (April to July 1994).
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