Statistics and the Public Sphere

Contemporary public life in Britain would be unthinkable without the use of statistics and statistical reasoning. Numbers dominate political discussion, facilitating debate while also attracting criticism on the grounds of their veracity and utility. However, the historical role and place of statistics within Britain's public sphere has yet to receive the attention it deserves. There exist numerous histories of both modern statistical reasoning and the modern public sphere; but to date, there are no works which, quite pointedly, aim to analyse the historical entanglement of the two. Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numbers and the People in Modern Britain, c.1800-2000 directly addresses this neglected area of historiography, and in so doing places the present in some much needed historical perspective.

Tom Crook is Lecturer in Modern British History at Oxford Brookes University. He has published in Social History, Urban History and Journal of Victorian Culture. He is currently completing a book-length study entitled Time and the Social Body: Public Health and English Modernity, 1830-1914. Glen O'Hara is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Oxford Brookes University. He is the author of Britain and the Sea since 1600 (2010), From Dreams to Disillusionment; Economic and Social Planning in 1960s Britain (2007), and the co-editor of The Modernisation of Britain? Harold Wilson and the Labour Governments of 1964-1970 (2006).

1. The 'Torrent of Numbers': Statistics and the Public Sphere in Britain, C. 1800-2000. Tom Crook and Glen O'Hara 2. Statistics and the Career of Public Reason: Engagement and Detachment in a Quantified World. Theodore M. Porter Part I: Governing Numbers 3. 'In These You May Trust': Numerical Information, Accounting Practices and the Poor Law, c. 1790 to 1840. Steven King 4. The State and Statistics in Victorian and Edwardian Britain: Promotion of the Public Sphere or Boundary Maintenance? Edward Higgs 5. Numbers, Experts and Ideas: The French Economic Model in Britain, c. 1951-1973. Glen O'Hara Part II: Picturing the Public 6. Numbers and Narratives: Epistemologies of Aggregation in British Statistics and Social Realism, c. 1790-1880. Maeve E. Adams 7. Printed Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numeracy, Electoral Politics and the Visual Culture of Numbers, 1880-1914. James Thompson 8. The Statisticalization of the Consumer in British Market Research, c. 1920-1960: Profiling a Good Society. Stefan Schwarzkopf Part III: Numbers and Public Trust 9. Suspect Figures: Statistics and Public Trust in Victorian England. Tom Crook 10. Numbers, Character and Trust in Early Victorian Britain: The Independent West Middlesex Fire and Life Assurance Company Fraud. James Taylor Part IV: The Politics of Statistics 11. 'Population Combined With Wealth and Taxation': Statistics, Representation and the Making of the 1832 Reform Act. S.J. Thompson 12. A 'Naked Strength and Beauty': Statistics in the British Tariff Debate, 1880-1914. Edmund Rogers 13. Polling Public Opinion before Opinion Polls: The Conservative Party and Election Prediction between the Wars. Laura Beers 14. Towards New Histories of an Enumerated People. Tom Crook and Glen O'Hara