States, Societies, and Censuses

Abstract

"Changes in Censuses from Imperialist to Welfare States, the second of two volumes, uses historical and comparative methods to analyze censuses or census-like information in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Italy, starting in England over one-thousand years ago. The authors argue that censuses arose from interactions between bureaucracies and social interests, and that censuses constituted public, official knowledge not where they were insulated from social pressures, but rather where there was intense social and political interaction around them"--