The Indexification of Poverty: The Covert Politics of <scp>Small‐Area</scp> Indices

In recent decades statistical indices have become a dominant method for measuring many features of the social world. While resulting enumerations are regularly cited by critical human geographers, wider political stakes indexing world remain unaddressed. this article, we theorise indexification as process through which composite statistics transform theoretical constructs into epistemic objects, and then geographically bounded rankings. Rather than neutral process, argue that these epistemological manoeuvres can mask various forms violence. Through detailed analysis UK's Index Multiple Deprivation (IMD), highlight clandestine politics their tendency to conceal harms meted out state. Seeking more reckoning with indices, conclude calling outlining project radical indexification—a participatory, democratic, transparent endeavour takes spatial justice its organising principle.