Counting and measuring humans

Early communities/societies

Early communities/societies

accumulation
- prep for bad times (weather)

- commerce

- protection (army, wall)

- public works
- conquer

high priest

Mesopotamia/Sumer

tax

admin

high priest

Mesopotamia/Sumer

tax

admin

ruler
palace

The first censuses

purpose: tax collection, "men fit to military service"
characteristics: periodical, only men

Egypt, Greece, Rome, Israel, China

Book of Numbers 1:3: God orders Moses and Aron to take census on all tribes, clans and families of Israel, 20 years or more men.
purpose: war

Total number of men older than 20: 603 550 (- the tribe of Levi)

 

census = censere = estimate

censor = a magistrate who supervises the census

basic population count and public relation with the population in order to make them "readable" (James C. Scott)

Liber Censuum - real estate revenues of the papacy

1086 - Domesday Book - tax
1328 - L'État de paroisses et de feux

16-17. century

Bills of mortality: weekly, bi-weekly - burial monitoring system on causes of death

John Graunt - 1662
The first in-depth analysis of demographic data

16-17. century

William Petty: Political arithmetick 1662-

First mathematical analysis of economic data

16-17. century

Jean Talon - Census of New France 1666
- not only basic demographic data
- criminal acts
- profession
- wealth
- marital status
- wealth
- language
- ethnicity
- religion

in order to: tax, state admin, urban design

18. century - the rise of statistics

statistics = from the Italian word statista, statisticum collegium

Ghirolamo Ghillini 1589: facts and information about the state

Joachim Achenwall, 1749: statistik = the science of state
England: political arithmetic

Statistical/mathematical methods earlier: Petty, Huygens, Fermat, Bernoulli

Two schools: descriptive statistics vs. mathematical
School of Göttingen (continental)
English political arithmetic

18. century - the rise of statistics

1719: The first modern population census, Prussia, Frederick William I (soldatenkönig), Prussia: Garrison State

1768: Spain
1784: Habsburg Monarchy
1801: France, England (Malthus)

19. century - anthropometrics

Adolphe Quetelet
- Belgian astronomer, statistician
- the society can be described, analysed and calculated as physics (physique sociale)
- L'homme moyen (average/normal man), 1835
 Knowing the average man is the key to producing and educating a man free from extremism. Hence, a society and state free of human extremism is easier to govern, easier to control.
- "normal distribution curve of the society"
- "mean values = ideal values"

19. century - anthropometrics

Francis Galton
- English polymath
- "nature vs. nurture", correlation
- eugenics: based on the misunderstood natural selection theory of Darwin (his half cousin). "Negative traits (colour, height, criminality, disobedience, "stupidity", "cretinism", etc.) resulting from the inherited genes of man can be corrected at the social level by means of programmes. Positive eug: encouraging "superior" members of society to have more children. Negative: encouraging the "abnormal" to have fewer children or forbidding them to have children - sterilization"

19. century - control state

Prussia, France: spy network based on demographics
Prison (Panopticon) - Jeremy Bentham/Foucault
Loic Wacquant: "prison/punishment societies" / "creation of underclass"
Roger Clarke: "dataveillance" 1988
Beniger: Control revolution

stasi: 100k, KGB 1 million people in mass surveillance

19. century - bad planning

Soviet Union: social engineering, holodomor, Lysenkoism
Bangladesh: centralization vs. decentralization