Making It Count (eBook)

Statistics and Statecraft in the Early People's Republic of China

Arunabh Ghosh (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2020
360 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-19921-4 (ISBN)

Infos

A history of how Chinese officials used statistics to define a new society in the early years of the People's Republic of China In 1949, at the end of a long period of wars, one of the biggest challenges facing leaders of the new People's Republic of China was how much they did not know. The government of one of the world's largest nations was committed to fundamentally reengineering its society and economy via socialist planning while having almost no reliable statistical data about their own country. Making It Count is the history of efforts to resolve this "e;crisis in counting."e; Drawing on a wealth of sources culled from China, India, and the United States, Arunabh Ghosh explores the choices made by political leaders, statisticians, academics, statistical workers, and even literary figures in attempts to know the nation through numbers.Ghosh shows that early reliance on Soviet-inspired methods of exhaustive enumeration became increasingly untenable in China by the mid-1950s. Unprecedented and unexpected exchanges with Indian statisticians followed, as the Chinese sought to learn about the then-exciting new technology of random sampling. These developments were overtaken by the tumult of the Great Leap Forward (1958-61), when probabilistic and exhaustive methods were rejected and statistics was refashioned into an ethnographic enterprise. By acknowledging Soviet and Indian influences, Ghosh not only revises existing models of Cold War science but also globalizes wider developments in the history of statistics and data.Anchored in debates about statistics and its relationship to state building, Making It Count offers fresh perspectives on China's transition to socialism.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 31.3.2020
• Reihe/Serie: Histories of Economic Life
• Reihe/Serie: Histories of Economic Life
• Reihe/Serie: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
• Reihe/Serie: Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
• Zusatzinfo: 11 b/w illus. 17 tables.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Sammeln / Sammlerkataloge
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Empirische Sozialforschung
• Schlagworte: Accounting • Agriculture • Agriculture (Chinese mythology) • Anti-Rightist Campaign • Anti-Rightist Movement • A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State • Area Studies • Austin Jersild • Beijing • bureaucrat • Calculation • Capitalism • central government • China • Chinese Academy of Social Sciences • Chinese population management • Chinese statistical reports • Chinese statistics • Choh-ming Li • comparative statecraft • Counting • Criticism • Curating Revolution: Politics on Display in Mao’s China • decentralization • Deliberation • Demography • Denise Ho • dialectical materialism • dichotomy • Economic Governance • Economic planning • economic policymaking • Economics • Economic statistics • economist • economy • Employment • estimation • ethnographic, exhaustive, stochastic approaches • Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union • Felix Wemheuer • First five-year plan (Soviet Union) • Governance • government statisticians • Graduate school • Great Leap Forward • Guideline • Handbook • Hebei • Heilongjiang • historians of modern China • How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind • Ideology • implementation • income • Indian Statistical Institute • industrialisation • Infrastructure • Institution • Jennifer Altehenger • Jeremy Friedman • Jerzy Neyman • Keynesian Economics • Lecture • Legal Lessons: Popularizing Laws in the People’s Republic of China • Liu Shaoqi • Lorenz Lüthi • maoism • Mao Zedong • Mass line • Mathematical Statistics • Measurement • modern Chinese history • National Archives of India • nationalist government • national statistical systems • newspaper • On Practice • Oral History • Peking University • Political Economy • Politics • Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis • Princeton University Press • Probability • Probability Theory • professionalization • Publication • quantitative positivism • quantitative techniques • Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China • Requirement • Sampling (Statistics) • science and technology • Scientist • Self-reliance • Shadow Cold War • Shenyang • Sigrid Schmalzer • Sino-Indian, PRC studies • Social engineering (political science) • Social fact • Socialist society (Labour Party) • socialist state • socialist statistics • Social Research • Social Science • Sociology • Soviet Union • standardized statistical work • Statistic • Statistical approaches • Statistical Science • statistical significance and random sampling • Statistical Theory • Statistical unit • statistician • Statistics • Subjectivity • Superiority (short story) • Supply (economics) • Survey Sampling • Tax • Technology • Ted Porter • Textbook • The Rise of Statistical Thinking • The Sino-Soviet Alliance • The Sino-Soviet Split • The Statistical System of Communist China • Tianjin • tongji • Tong Lam • Trust in Numbers • Tsinghua University • Utilization • Writing • Xue • Yan'an • year • Zhou Enlai • Zhu De • Zichan
• ISBN-10: 0-691-19921-3 / 0691199213
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-19921-4 / 9780691199214