Lay metrology and metroscoping: Toward the study of lay units

Abstract

This exploratory paper provides groundwork toward a tentative framework for exploring how lay measures and units - what is here called ‘lay metrology’ - intersect with formal metrology, and its various mediations. The paper concerns itself with the role that everyday ‘units’ – grounded in part in the material culture of bodies and experience – play in relation to a metrological landscape, or ‘metroscape’ that is also inhabited by standardised units routinely popularised through various media. After a brief overview of the relevant literature on metrology, examples of lay metrology are provided that examine the relation of everyday units of, for example, length and area, to particular forms of bodily experience, social identity, and sensorial capacities. The paper draws on elements from science communication and affect theory to develop the notion of ‘metroscoping’ and to articulate a series of orienting questions for engaging with lay metrological processes.