File spoon-archives/marxism.archive/marxism_1994/94-08-28.000, message 116


Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 16:03:21 -0400 (EDT)
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: Normativity and stats (was Marxism and academia)




On Thu, 18 Aug 1994, Andy Daitsman wrote:

> Phrasing the question this way allows us to return to what I think was Wes's
> original point: that even before statistical tables can be drawn up a
> discursive structure must exist which will allow them to be drawn up.  The
> statistician must have a concept that s/he seeks to represent in the table,
> whether that concept is unemployment, or economic growth, or the money
> supply, etc.  Furthermore, the table will also represent the methodology
> through which the numbers were generated.  And we could go on and on, finding
> multiple elements where the table represents something other than the economic
> category it purports to describe.
>  
> In other words, the statistics, far from an unproblematic and transparent
> representation of economic reality, are actually a discursive structure
> mediated through the consciousness of the individual (or collective)
> economic researcher.  They are also a zone of contention, as anyone even
> marginally familiar with the unemployment debate in the US is painfully aware
> (and the best evidence of that is the little discussion between Wes and Doug).
>  
Absolutely. Wouldn't disagree with you for a second. My point, however, 
is that the data is plentiful enough to allow analysts to rework it to 
fit their discursive structure. You don't have to accept the bourgeois 
state's definitions to find richness within its data products.

Doug

Doug Henwood [dhenwood-AT-panix.com]
Left Business Observer
212-874-4020 (voice)
212-874-3137 (fax)



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