CALL FOR PAPERS

NUMBERS, NORMS AND THE PEOPLE: , c. 1750 TO THE PRESENT

A TWO-DAY CONFERENCE AT OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY, CENTRE FOR THE HISTORY OF WELFARE AND MODERN GOVERNANCE

FRIDAY-SATURDAY, 5-6 SEPTEMBER, 2008

Contemporary public and political life in Britain would be unthinkable without the use of statistics and statistical reasoning. Politicians use statistics to track public opinion; numbers circulate and proliferate in the media; experts provide an ‘informed’ public with a steady stream of facts and figures; meanwhile, the public defines itself and its fortunes in terms of statistics and statistical norms (growth rates, house prices, obesity levels, crime figures). Such numbers, while they enable political communication, are also an object of political critique themselves; that they assume such a pervasive presence is in part because experts, politicians and the public alike constantly contest the figures provided by others, or else offer alternative ones of their own. In short, today’s public sphere is one shaped, defined and made possible by the power of statistics. The aim of this conference is to put this in historical perspective.

Agenda: Since it was first translated into English in 1989, Jürgen Habermas’s The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) has inspired a wealth of historical - and political and sociological - literature. Habermas’s concept of the public sphere is now a well-established part of the historiographical landscape and has transformed perceptions of both early modern and modern Europe. Much of this literature has critiqued and refined aspects of Habermas’s original story, questioning its chronology and highlighting the existence of multiple public spheres, many of them shaped by considerations of gender, class and race and the specificities of national cultures and traditions. Another point of critique has been Habermas’s contention that the critical potential of the ‘bourgeois’ public sphere dissipated with the onset the welfare state and the development of a ‘mass society’. Strikingly, however, there has been little reflection on the role of statistics and statistical reasoning, not only in enabling and transforming the modern public sphere, but also in defining what historical agents understood by the terms ‘public’, ‘public rationality’, and ‘public opinion’. Habermas himself clearly viewed the political application of statistics (as in something like public opinion polling) as part of the degeneration of a liberal public sphere into its twentieth-century mass, technological form; yet historians have yet to deal systematically or critically with this particular aspect of his narrative.

The aim of this conference is to rectify this historiographical omission in the context of modern Britain, the country where the idea and practice of the public sphere first took root. The conference is inter-disciplinary in orientation and welcomes historians from all fields (social, political, economic, history of science etc.), and those with interests in historical sociology and political science. It especially welcomes historians willing to engage critically with Habermas’s notion and narrative of the modern public sphere, from its inception in the eighteenth century to its transformation in the twentieth. The conference aims to attract both long-term historiographical/theoretical reflections and more focused, historical case studies.

The projected outcome of the conference is an edited collection of essays. Routledge will be targeted in the first instance.

Format: The event will take the form of a two-day conference, consisting of pre-circulated papers (where possible), short 20-minute presentations and plenary sessions from invited speakers. Discussion will be organized around a number of thematic panels and strands:

Rethinking the public sphere: theoretical and long-term historical reflections on the emergence of the public sphere, statistics and the modern state; or again, and more broadly, the inter-relations of democracy, bureaucracy and statistics, and public and expert modes of reasoning.

Statistics, ethics and the public sphere: the public use and circulation of statistics, and the ethical and political values this embodied: values, for instance, of disinterestedness, political rationality and public accountability, and critical, numerate citizenship; the use of numbers and the performance of gender in the public sphere.

Defining and informing the public: statistics and the generation of public and political identities; the internalization of norms and associated concepts by the public; ideas of the ‘mass’, ‘average’ and ‘normal’ as these circulate within and help constitute ideas of the public and public opinion; the normalization of the public sphere and public opinion.

Contesting statistics in the public sphere: statistics as a source of both trust and authority, and suspicion and critique; the reception and circulation of statistics by the press and public; the use and contestation of statistics in political discourse; statistics and the shift from a ‘liberal’ media culture to a mass media culture.

Counting and questioning the public: the genesis and use of public opinion polling and associated ideas of good and bad political practice; the politics and ethics of public opinion polling; the use and contestation of public polling techniques.

Locating the public sphere: the question of statistics and the existence of multiple, dominant and/or overlapping public spheres; their shifting location and function with respect to the state, civil society and voluntary organizations; statistics, the public sphere and ‘mixed’ economies of welfare; the public sphere and information technology.

Contact: Please send a very brief CV and proposal (300 words) to [log in to unmask] Alternatively, if you are interested in attending as a delegate please e-mail to reserve a place.

Organizers: Dr. Tom Crook (Oxford Brookes), Dr. Glen O’Hara (Oxford Brookes).


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