How States and Societies Count

Censuses in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom

— a discussion with the authors of Antecedents of Censuses from Medieval to Nation States: How Societies and States Count (Volume I) and Changes in Censuses from Imperialist to Welfare States: How Societies and States Count, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Authors

Rebecca Jean Emigh, University of California, Los Angeles, Sociology
Dylan Riley, University of California, Berkeley, Sociology
Patricia Ahmed, South Dakota State, Sociology

Discussants

Theodore M. Porter, University of California, Los Angeles, History
Jacob G. Foster, University of California, Los Angeles, Sociology

Reception follows

Antecedents of Censuses From Medieval to Nation States, the first of two volumes, uses historical and comparative methods to analyze how medieval population counts and land surveys, starting about one thousand years ago, were the precursors of censuses in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Italy. The authors show that the development of censuses depended on the interaction between states and societies. Censuses developed as early and comprehensive solutions to state administrative problems where social actors had extensive knowledge that states could use and where social actors advocated for their adoption.

Changes in Censuses from Imperialist to Welfare States, the second of two volumes, uses historical and comparative methods to analyze censuses in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy, starting in the nineteenth century. The authors argue that censuses arose from interactions between government bureaucracies and social interests, and that censuses constituted public, official knowledge not where they were insulated from social pressures, but rather where intense social and political interaction surrounded around them.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Center for American Politics & Public Policy, Center for European & Russian Studies, Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies, Center for the Study of Women, UCLA Department of Sociology (Ethnography Working Group, Theory Working Group, and Irene Flecknoe Ross Lecture Series). The Irene Flecknoe Ross Lecture Series is made possible by a gift from Ray Ross in memory of his wife.