Official statistics: measurement, political, and theoretical issues

The papers in this session form an integrated ensemble that covers a number of interrelated issues, a wide range of geographical areas, and varied historical contexts. They depict debates surrounding the production of official statistics, the respective merits of self-identification vs. categorization, the slipperiness of concepts and measures of race, multiraciality, and ethnicity, the evolution of categories and their repurposing, and the political nature of statistical categories. For each of these issues, I will focus on one author and discuss the broader, ongoing theoretical debates under which they are subsumed.