Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in American Politics
Episode: Dan Bouk, "Democracy's Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them" (MCD, 2022)
Description: Dan Bouk is a writer, professor, and cultural historian of quantification, or as Bouk puts it, the history all fascinating things “shrouded in the cloak of borningness.” In Bouk’s book, Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them (2022), the author invites readers into the social life of 1940 US Census. The stories of the people who wrote the question, asked the questions, and answered them—or refused—is a lesson in how power is negotiated on the ground. Bouk shows that the census questions were—and are—not only queries but also statements ab...