Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T02:56:47.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Census, Audiences, and Publics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Margo Anderson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Visual and oral, video and audio evidence are brought to bear to examine the history of the U.S. census and the practice of social science history. The article explores how artists have appropriated and depicted census taking in America and how census takers used “artistic” forms of evidence to advertise and promote the census and explicate census results to the public. The article also suggests how social science historians have understood and used the new electronic environment of the Internet and the World Wide Web to present their data and findings.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Social Science History , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Spring 2008 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2008 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Margo (1988) The American Census: A Social History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Margo, and Fienberg, Stephen E. (2001) Who Counts? The Politics of Census-Taking in Contemporary America. Rev. ed. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Boney, Knowles (1957) Liverpool Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century and Its Makers. London: Batsford.Google Scholar
Branegan, Jay (2000) “You could call it the wonk wing.” Time, May 15, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,996910–1,00.html.Google Scholar
Brunell, Thomas L. (2000) “Using statistical sampling to estimate the U.S. population: The methodological and political debate over census 2000.” Political Science and Politics 33: 775–82.Google Scholar
Carr, Caleb (1994) The Alienist. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Choldin, Harvey (1994) Looking for the Last Percent: The Controversy over Census Undercounts. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Henry Nichols Blake (1988) Francis W. Edmonds: American Master in the Dutch Tradition. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Conk, Margo Anderson (1980) The U.S. Census and Labor Force Change: A History of Occupation Statistics, 1870–1940. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press.Google Scholar
Darga, Kenneth (1999) Sampling and the Census: A Case against the Proposed Adjustments for Undercount. Washington, DC: AEI.Google Scholar
Doreski, William (1988) “Robert Frost's ‘The Census-Taker’ and the problem of wilderness.” Twentieth Century Literature 34: 30–39.Google Scholar
Frost, Robert (1923) New Hampshire. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Gardner, Martin, ed. (1967) The Annotated Casey at the Bat. New York: Bramhall House.Google Scholar
Hewett, David (2000) “Two days in Portsmouth bring $5.28 million.” Maine Antique Digest, November, maineantiquedigest.com/articles_archive/articles/por1100.htm.Google Scholar
Holmes, Steven A. (2000) “In remote Alaska, counting begins for the census.” New York Times, January 21.Google Scholar
Kaiser, John (1905) “Casey taking the census.” 8075: Edison Gold Moulded Record, Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php.Google Scholar
Kousser, J. Morgan (1980) “History QUASSHed: Quantitative social scientific history in perspective.” American Behavioral Scientist 23: 885–904.Google Scholar
Kousser, J. Morgan (1984) “The revivalism of narrative: A response to recent criticisms of quantitative history.” Social Science History 8: 133–49.Google Scholar
McCauley, Robert H. (1942) Liverpool Transfer Designs on Anglo-American Pottery. Portland, ME: Southworth-Anthoensen.Google Scholar
Skerry, Peter (2000) Counting on the Census? Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Alan (1971) Liverpool Herculaneum Pottery. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Smith, Terence (2000) “Online focus: The West Wing,” PBS Online NewsHour, October 4, www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec00/westwing_10-4.html;media.pbs.org/ramgen/newshour/2000/10/04/westwing.rm?altplay=westwing.rm.Google Scholar
Social History Division (1978) “British-made earthenware pitcher commemorating the first official population census of the United States in 1790.” Negative no. 78-16903, 78-16906. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, historywired.si.edu/enlarge.cfm?ID=356&ShowEnlargement=1 (accessed October 7, 2007).Google Scholar
Stewart, Cal (1919) “Uncle Josh takes the census.” Internet Archive, www.archive.org/details/CalStewart_part2. Also available at the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/index.php.Google Scholar
Turner, Frederick Jackson (1893) “The significance of the frontier in American history.” Report of the American Historical Association for 1893, 199–227, xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/TURNER/chapter1.html.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1874) Statistical Atlas of the United States Based on the Results of the Ninth Census 1870 with Contributions from Many Eminent Men of Science and Several Departments of the Government Comp. under the Authority of Congress by Francis A. Walker, M.A., Superintendent of the Ninth Census. New York: Bien, hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3701gm.gct00008 (accessed October 7, 2007).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1940) “It's your America! Help the ten-year roll call—1940 census, U.S.A.” Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3g01801 (accessed October 7, 2007).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1955) The 1950 Censuses—How They Were Taken. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1976) Historical Statistics of the United States. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (1979) Twenty Censuses: Population and Housing Questions, 1790–1980. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (2001) “2000 U.S. population centered in Phelps County, Mo.” Press release, April 2, www.census.gov/geo/www/cenpop/cb01cn66.html.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (2007) U.S. and World Population Clocks—POPClocks, www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html (accessed October 7, 2007).Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census (n.d.) Mean Center of Population for the United States: 1790 to 2000, www.census.gov/geo/www/cenpop/meanctr.pdf (accessed October 7, 2007).Google Scholar
Watney, Bernard (1997) Liverpool Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century. Somerset: Dennis.Google Scholar