TY - JOUR

T1 - Statistical Innovation in the Global South

AU - Villacis, Byron

AU - Thiel, Alena

AU - Capistrano, Daniel

AU - Carvalho Da Silva, Christyne

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Copyright 2022 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - This article proposes a comparative socio-economic history of quantification in Ecuador, Brazil, Ghana and Sierra Leone. It narrows in on censuses in the Global South as sites of methodological and infrastructural innovation in the context of global circulations of model population data systems, methodological standards, and material infrastructures. Specifically, the authors ask which arrangements of actors, norms and settings are involved in the reception, translation and adaptation of statistical innovation and how uneven relations and compositions of power between and within these fields shape the process of transmission. Distilling from their explorative, hermeneutic approach, the authors explore the mechanisms that link variously positioned political fields (Bourdieu, 1985) in the production and implementation of statistical innovation in the Global South. Four mechanisms are identified that shape statistical innovation as process of reception of globally circulating models and ideas as well as their adaptations into specific fields, all of which have differentiated effects and play under certain conditions in parallel or combined ways: 1) interventionist impulses from international organizations, 2) commercial and institutional brokerage, 3) initiatives from local professional communities, and 4) effects of political instabilities.

AB - This article proposes a comparative socio-economic history of quantification in Ecuador, Brazil, Ghana and Sierra Leone. It narrows in on censuses in the Global South as sites of methodological and infrastructural innovation in the context of global circulations of model population data systems, methodological standards, and material infrastructures. Specifically, the authors ask which arrangements of actors, norms and settings are involved in the reception, translation and adaptation of statistical innovation and how uneven relations and compositions of power between and within these fields shape the process of transmission. Distilling from their explorative, hermeneutic approach, the authors explore the mechanisms that link variously positioned political fields (Bourdieu, 1985) in the production and implementation of statistical innovation in the Global South. Four mechanisms are identified that shape statistical innovation as process of reception of globally circulating models and ideas as well as their adaptations into specific fields, all of which have differentiated effects and play under certain conditions in parallel or combined ways: 1) interventionist impulses from international organizations, 2) commercial and institutional brokerage, 3) initiatives from local professional communities, and 4) effects of political instabilities.

KW - Brazil

KW - digitalization

KW - Ecuador

KW - Ghana

KW - population censuses

KW - Sierra Leone

KW - statistical innovation

KW - translation

U2 - 10.1163/15691330-bja10060

DO - 10.1163/15691330-bja10060

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85139409491

VL - 21

SP - 419

EP - 446

JO - Comparative Sociology

JF - Comparative Sociology

SN - 1569-1322

IS - 4

ER -