Normative Texts and Occupational Practices: Towards New Social Histories of Mathematics

This open access book explores the relations between normative mathematical texts, which encode various forms of measurement, calculation and reasoning, and the practices of accountants, craftspeople, artisans and other social actors. Mathematics is often divided into a theoretical, intellectual, and normative component, on the one hand, and, on the other, a practical-applied component, implemented in various labour and other social contexts. However, this division usually assumes that practice reflects the text, whereas, in reality, their relations are much more diverse. This volume explores how text and practice shape each other, complement each other, contradict each other or even ignore each other. In doing so, it opens up the problem of mathematical text and practice as a varied, multi-dimensional, cross-cultural and global-historical problem, where different contexts called for different negotiations between text and practice.