%0 Journal Article 
%A Marí Sáez, Víctor Manuel
%T Towards a Critical Political Economy of Indicators. Measuring and Evaluating “Alteratively” Communication, Development and Social Change

%D 2017
%@ 2255-3401
%U http://hdl.handle.net/10498/22542
%X Is a critical political economy of indicators necessary? We came to this
conclusion some years ago after analysing the indicators used to measure the social
uses of Internet (Marí, 2012). We were able to check how, in the reference reports,
social and political uses of Internet took a secondary place. At the same time, analysis,
practises and visions of antiglobalistic social movements were absent or invisible.
It seems as if indicators had acquired a life of their own in these traditional reports,
breaking away from reality –especially from the social and political dimensions of
reality–, but this autonomization process has not been accompanied by a liberation
from the capitalistic teleology that guides it.
Therefore, it was necessary –such was our approach– to repair this system of
absences in a double sense. Firstly, through a theoretical and conceptual work, aimed
to define new indicators, more “social” and “political”, that allow us to overcome our
current shortcomings when measuring the citizen and social needs of the Internet.
Secondly, opening up ways to overcome the reductionism of indicators conceived
under the dominant mercantilistic logic.

%~ Universidad de Cádiz