February 06, 2007
Statistics Made Savory
Until I read the review of Sarah Igo's book The Averaged American it had never occurred to me that the ability to gather statistics has had an impact on human consciousness. Statistics have changed the way we are able to view ourselves, in similar way to that of perspective. The ability to represent three dimensions in two dimensional space has changed our human point of view profoundly. From the review:
On the face of it, the subject matter of ''The Averaged American'' could hardly sound duller: it's about social science data -- specifically, about the increasing use of surveys, polls and other forms of statistical measurements beginning in the years after World War I. But Igo, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has an ambitious argument to make: that the advent of new techniques of measurement not only helped give birth to the modern social sciences but also changed the way America thinks of itself. Focusing principally on three milestones in the annals of empirical research -- the famous study of Muncie, Ind., published as ''Middletown'' in 1929; the emergence of George Gallup's and Elmo Roper's political polling in the 1930s; and the publication of the infamous Kinsey reports in 1948 and 1953 -- Igo chronicles the emergence of a ''mass society'' and the transformation of the American consciousness along statistical lines. In telling this story, Igo does for social statistics what Louis Menand's ''Metaphysical Club'' did for American pragmatism, providing a narrative intellectual history of the field.
We now know, on a daily basis, how the American public feels about any number of issues, from TV to politics, and those statistics influence our ability to understand ourselves and to act accordingly.
It just so happens that the statistics of poverty and public health have been floating under my nose lately. I am on my second back-to-back reading of Tracy Kidder's inspiring book, "Mountains Beyond Mountains" a Kidderly examination of the life of Dr. Paul Farmer, McArthur genius grant recipien medical anthropologist, physician and humanitarian who has worked with and against statistics in public health all over the world - though primarily in Haiti.
Saturday night I went to see "The Painted Veil" a film adaptation of Somerset Maughan's novel , because it was shot in the breathtaking mountains near Guilin, a city which I am about to visit. It's star and producer , Edward Norton, studied Chinese history as an undergraduate at Yale, and has added historical and technical content to the original text. The book takes place in 1925, and involves a British bacteriologist who takes his unfaithful young wife into a cholera epidemic in rural China. In addition to examining the nature of love, the film deals with the relationship between public health, poverty and cultural practices. Not unlike "Mountains Beyond Mountains" , without the statistics.
The universe must have meant me to write about this stuff, since it delivered an astonishing and hopeful statistical presentation right to my doorstep on this very topic, so you can see just how juicy statistics can be. Enjoy the show!
Photo note: A measuring shot, with little pink tags for flavor
Posted by Dakota at February 6, 2007 07:04 PM