Towards Global Histories of Surveying Cultures: Administrative Knowledge Production and Statistics 17th – 21st Century

The history of the survey addresses the interface between administrative practice and the production of knowledge about the social and natural world. The survey or Enquête, understood as a range of diverse modes of knowledge production based on punctual or regular observations, serves as the conceptual starting point for our workshop. We build on recent researches and wish to broaden their temporal, spatial as well as conceptual scope.

Our temporal and spatial expansion of the history of the Enquête is linked to a fundamental historiographical and methodological question: How to overcome the narratives of scientification, modernization and rationalization, in which the history of the Enquête has long been embedded in? We assume that these narratives obstruct our possibility to think the various and sometimes connected cultures of knowledge production. We aim at developing global histories of the Enquête along alternative genealogies and methodologies that go beyond the classical assumptions of strong scientific rationality and European modernity.

In order to explore these questions, the workshop assembles talks that address surveying cultures from the early modern period to the present and brings together speakers and participants from colonial history, historical sociology and the history of knowledge and science. The workshop is also a work meeting to think about further forms of promotion of global histories of surveying cultures.

Speakers: Fanny Malègue (Paris), Chikouna Cissé (Abidjan), Martin Petzke (Bielefeld), Tal Arbel (Chicago), Harun Küçük (Philadelphia).

Cooperation: CMB, Universität Konstanz, Université Cheikh Anta Diop

Downloads

Program