ABSTRACT
Interest in the study of standards and standardization within the social sciences has grown dramatically over the past two decades (Timmermans and Epstein 2010). Prior to that time, standards largely remained in the realm of the technical (e.g. U.S. Standards for Grain). Officially, standards are created to standardize processes (industrial and management), to facilitate trade by both ensuring inter-operability and encouraging competition through differentiation, and to protect consumers by stabilizing product qualities. In doing so, standards are presented as strictly technical details, based on scientific criteria, around which people and things are expected to conform (e.g. standard dress sizes require both fabric and humans to conform to a fixed set of measurements).
