POL 383 - Who Counts? Enumeration, Representation, Democracy

Counting is woven into the fabric of democratic politics. Modern states and representative governments have always depended on (and often pioneered) new enumerative techniques. The U.S. Census, for example, constructs the population as both an object to be managed and as a subject-“The People”-amenable to representation. Elections harness aggregation to put representatives’ claims to the test. Polls and crowd estimates seek to measure and articulate public opinion. Politicians, activists, and journalists build narratives out of numbers. We begin with a theoretical and historical overview of counting, along with allied practices of categorizing, classifying, and commensurating. In the abstract, counting appears relatively straightforward; in the political field it is contentious and consequential. Counts are technical and narrative achievements embedded in disciplinary fields, reliant on technologies and instruments, systems of registration and surveillance, and fragile networks of trust. We then turn to attempts to understand the elusive concept of representation, from Hobbes to contemporary democratic theorists. Finally, we examine the relationship between counting and representing across four sites: the census, public opinion polling, voting, and crowd estimation.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Instructional Method: Conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Not offered: 2024-25
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.