Democracy and Public Knowledge: An Issue for Social Indicators

Abstract

A new impetus for recollecting information seems regaining appeal, maybe heir of the “social indicators movement.” The movement was an heir to the supporters of quantification in the social sciences, as numbers were believed to be objective and scientific per se and information was considered to be a citizen’s right. A new impetus for recollecting information seems regaining appeal, maybe heir of the social indicators movement. The movement was an heir to the supporters of quantification in the social sciences, as numbers were believed to be objective and scientific per se and information was considered to be a citizens right. The study of society in its various dimensions has stimulated the search for and construction of statistical indicators and indices. The search for a better way of studying the progress of societies has often led to inappropriate uses of indicators and measures. GNP, for example, has been commonly considered to be an indicator of well-being. The lack of a conceptual frame for studying well-being is not the only problem, nor even the greatest. Of similar importance - or even greater - are the meager statistical skills of journalists, policymakers and - in general - the public. All together, these elements facilitate limiting the use of data in public debate. In this chapter, I will consider the shift from political arithmetic to modern social reports (par. 1), the success of quantification in the administration of the state (par. 2) and in the struggle for the betterment of quality of life conditions led by nongovernment entities (par. 3), the misuses of quantification (par. 4), the current nonuse of quantification, and the search for contextual conditions that interfere with the transformation of information into knowledge (par. 5).