Statistics and social critique

Abstract

This paper focuses on the history of the uses of statistics as a tool for socialcritique. Whereas nowadays they are very often conceived as being in the hands of the powerful, there are many historical cases when they were, on the contrary, used to oppose the authority. The author first illustrates the theory of Ted Porter according to which quantification might be a “tool of weakness”. He then addresses the fact that statistics were used in the context of labour and on living conditions, thus being a resource for the lower class of society (and presenting the theory of statistics of Pelloutier, an anarchist activist). Finally comes the question of the conditions of success of these counterpropositions, discussed on the examples of the new random experiments in public policies, and of the measure of the 1% of the richest persons

Keywords

• neoliberalism
• sociology of quantification
• social critique
• statistics