Sticking Plasters and the Standardizations of Everyday Life

Abstract

This chapter addresses some of the forms of standardization that are associated with the everyday medical object of the ‘sticking plaster’ (also known under the genericized brand names of Band-Aid in the United States, and Elastoplast in the United Kingdom). As is well-known, standardization is routinely linked to the maintenance of quality — whether that be the quality of measures (such as the volt or the second), the quality of services (such as nursing or risk assessment), or the quality of artefacts (from everyday technologies like TVs and cookers through to scientific ‘objects’ such as genetically modified mice and gravitational wave detectors). Of course, these interdigitate in complex ways: for a TV to be standardized, so too must the services (manufacturing processes) that served in putting it together, and the measures that enable its components to fit and work together; the standardized volt rests on standardized technologies and technical practices for measuring and transporting it. Rolled into the notion of standardization are a series of basic parameters, for instance, the technologies that measure standards are ‘calibrateable’ and comparable; that measurements display accuracy and precision; that measurements be uniform, in the sense that they apply consistently across instances of the measuring process; that they be transferable, in the sense that they apply consistently across instances of the ‘thing’ being measured; that procedures by which measurements are implemented are transparent and can be fully articulated; that standards and their implementation are properly distributed and disseminated.