Centre de Sciences Humaines

Image from Google Jackets

Making it count : statistics and statecraft in the early People's Republic of China / Arunabh Ghosh.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Histories of economic lifePublication details: Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2020]Description: 1 online resourceContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780691199214
  • 0691199213
Subject(s): Additional physical formats: Print version:: Making it countDDC classification:
  • 001.4/22095109045 23
LOC classification:
  • HA37.C752
Contents:
A new type of standardized statistical work -- Ascertaining social fact -- No "mean" solution : reformulating statistics, disciplining scientists -- The nature of statistical work -- To "ardently love statistical work" : state (in-) capacity, professionalization, and their discontents -- Seeking common ground amidst differences : the turn to India -- A "great leap" in statistics.
Summary: "Among the biggest challenges facing leaders of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC) was how much they did not know. In 1949, at the end of a long sequence of wars, the government of one of the largest states in the world committed to fundamentally re-engineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no hard, reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is a history of attempts made to resolve this "crisis in counting." Drawing on a wealth of official, institutional, and private sources culled from China, India, and the United States, the author explores the choices made and the effects they engendered through a series of vivid encounters with political leaders, professional statisticians, academics, ordinary statistical workers, and even literary figures. Early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the middle of the 1950s. A series of unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were, in turn, overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), when both probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an essentially ethnographic enterprise. The author argues that this history, usually narrowly described as a universal, if European history, cannot be understood without acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences which not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes the wider developments in the history of statistics and data. For historians of China and social science, and political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists studying modern China"-- Provided by publisher.
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
Books Books Centre de Science Humaines 339.9 GHO (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 15839

Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--Columbia University, 2014, titled Making it count : statistics and state-society relations in the early People's Republic of China, 1949-1959.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A new type of standardized statistical work -- Ascertaining social fact -- No "mean" solution : reformulating statistics, disciplining scientists -- The nature of statistical work -- To "ardently love statistical work" : state (in-) capacity, professionalization, and their discontents -- Seeking common ground amidst differences : the turn to India -- A "great leap" in statistics.

"Among the biggest challenges facing leaders of the newly established People's Republic of China (PRC) was how much they did not know. In 1949, at the end of a long sequence of wars, the government of one of the largest states in the world committed to fundamentally re-engineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no hard, reliable statistical data about their own country. This book is a history of attempts made to resolve this "crisis in counting." Drawing on a wealth of official, institutional, and private sources culled from China, India, and the United States, the author explores the choices made and the effects they engendered through a series of vivid encounters with political leaders, professional statisticians, academics, ordinary statistical workers, and even literary figures. Early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the middle of the 1950s. A series of unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were, in turn, overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961), when both probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an essentially ethnographic enterprise. The author argues that this history, usually narrowly described as a universal, if European history, cannot be understood without acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences which not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes the wider developments in the history of statistics and data. For historians of China and social science, and political scientists, sociologists, and anthropologists studying modern China"-- Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher.

There are no comments on this title.

to post a comment.
Implemented & Customized by: BestBookBuddies

Powered by Koha