Statistics are knowledge that constitutes and orders the state

Evidence

Foucault speaks in Security, Territory, Population of the knowledge of the state, the knowledge it comes to acquire, diffuse, and circulate as “necessary” for governing. This is not just a knowledge of the law, but a knowledge – as he puts it – of the state’s reality, of its population, deemed necessary to govern. Such knowledge includes “forces and resources” comprising the state – its demography, its conditions of being and distribution, but also its social and natural ecology. Foucault calls this summation of knowledge “statistics.” At the very least, statistics synthesize the information comprising the state, making it up, offering a snapshot of state composition. But statistics also inform state-making, providing the data inputs fashioning it, making possible the modalities by which it governs, its modes of doing or carrying things out. Statistics, in short, order the state’s constitution of and relation to population. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1727

Categorization

• DEFINE: Recounts Foucault’s specific definition of statistics as the summation of state knowledge necessary for governing — demography, ecology, forces and resources.
• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s Security, Territory, Population and modern surveillance/demographic governance debates. — connects to: States now depend on corporate data knowledge about their own citizens. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 88; Statistical laws in politics presuppose mass passivity (actual or presumed). — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1530