Measures of Justice: A Symposium in Honor of Sally Engle Merry (1944–2020)

Quanti fi cation is a technology of control, but whether it is reformist or authoritarian depends on who has harnessed its power and for what purposes . — Sally Engle Merry, The Seductions of Quanti fi cation (2016, 218) Professor Sally Engle Merry ’ s thought-provoking scholarship has reached far beyond her disciplinary boundaries in anthropology and in fl uenced our own work as human rights and peace and con fl ict studies scholars. On a daily basis, through our research with Everyday Peace Indicators, we engage and struggle with many of the questions Sally raised in her research and publications on the quest for commensuration through measurement in international organizations and aid. In particular, her book The Seductions of Quanti fi cation (2016) provided us with the inspiration to continue to engage more deeply with our goals to democratize indicator production. Dilemmas of positionality, perspective, and power in measurement are the reasons we have developed systems to include everyday people in the decision making necessary to develop indicators for public policy and research (Firchow and Mac Ginty