A New Calculable Global World in the Making: Governing Through Transnational Certification Standards

Abstract

Abstract Governing with quantification rests on preliminary processes of transforming the world to make it quantifiable through conventions of formatting and equivalence-making. This chapter investigates a new globalized mode of governing, operating, away from states, through voluntary certification standards. Considering the case of sustainable palm oil certification, it follows the most vulnerable “stakeholders”, from their daily life in remote rural areas to the governing public roundtables and private confidential negotiations. Fostering the dialogue between the extended convention theory framework and governmentality studies, the chapter shows that in a new kind of “standardizing liberalism” [libéralisme normalisateur], “governing by standards” shifts the political debate about power, legitimacy and the common good onto measurable certifiable characteristics of goods and services to be chosen by autonomous opting individuals.