★Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation

 

Patrick Carroll

★Science, Culture, and Modern State Formation

(University of California Press, 2006)

 

 

 

Engineering the Data State : Scopes, Meters, and Graphs

This chapter develops the concept of the “data state”—a condition
of being governed by number. It notes that government by number
emerges from “political anatomy” and “political arithmetic.” It focuses
on the emergence of these political forms as engines for counting and
calculating natural and political objects. It examines Samuel Hartlib
and William Petty's designs and concludes with the great innovations
in censuses and cartography developed in Ireland in the first half of
the nineteenth century. It argues that the modern census is a political
technology engineered by bringing metering and graphing into a
simultaneously practiced and representational relationship.