- Varieties of Standardization
Standardization, in economic terms, primarily refers to various eforts to rationalize the economy, encompassing both production and consumption.1 In the secondary literature, three kinds of standardization are identified, as are three methods whereby standardization is implemented. The three general categories are standardization of product performance, standardization of measurement, and standardization to ensure compatibility between parts. The modes of implementation of standardization are de facto, where standards evolve spontaneously; de jure, which is standardization imposed by government regulation; and voluntary consensus, where various interested parties come together to agree on standards (Tate 2001; Russell 2008). The major agencies implementing or promoting standardization have been the state, business, professional organizations, the judiciary, unions, and various social movements, especially the consumer movement.
While standards of various sorts are probably, as sociologist Lawrence Busch (2011) has suggested, as old as culture itself, the concept of standardization has fairly recent origins.2 The earliest recorded appearance of the term standardize, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is in 1873, used in relation to chemical solutions. Similarly, standardization was first used, in 1896, in the context of pharmaceuticals. The first recorded use of the either term to denote economic rationalization occurred in 1901 (the year in which the Bureau of Standards was created).3 Over the next three decades there was a veritable explosion of discourse about standards and standardization. If the number of newspaper titles in which the term appears is any indication of the topicality and urgency of the issue, the most intense period of discussion about standardization clearly took place in the first half of the century, especially between 1910 and 1930.4 Talk about the issue subsided in the postwar era, although in the 1990s it increased again with discussions about standards in information and communications technology. In the first half of the century, the term is most commonly used in accord with its social scientific sense, to refer to the standardization of economic production. However, across the whole century the word has a multitude of meanings, used variously to refer to the rationalization of wages, to a tendency toward aesthetic conformity, and often as a vague term to denote a principle diametrically opposed to individuality and creativity.5
Standardization of Consumption, Work, and Wages
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