TY - JOUR
T1 - Statistics, Reform, and Regimes of Expertise in Turkey
AU - Silverstein, Brian
N1 - Funding Information:
My thanks first and foremost to those statisticians, technicians, and farmers, as well as others working in these fields in Turkey who generously agreed to talk with me and tolerated my being in their midst. Financial support for this research came from the Institute of Turkish Studies, the American Research Institute in Turkey, the University of Arizona SBSRI, and a faculty sabbatical from the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and the School of Anthropology, both at the University of Arizona. I am happy to gratefully acknowledge this support. For helpful comments and suggestions, I am also grateful to: Fikret Adaman, Ali Çarkog˘lu, Ali Burak Güven, Can Ac¸ıksöz, Zeynep Korkman, Tim Finan, Ståle Knudsen, Aomar Boum, Chris Dole, Elif Babül, and Aslı Ig˘sız. Thanks also to Elisabetta Carfagna at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, for alerting me to more global trends in agricultural data, and to Sinan Ciddi and Paul Levin for their invitation to present my work.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2014/10/2
Y1 - 2014/10/2
N2 - Statistics is one of the chapters in Turkey's EU entry negotiations, and the country is transforming what statistics it collects, using what methodologies, at what intervals, how it publishes them, and how it uses them. It is in light of the new statistical knowledge that the country is reforming its institutions and practices. This paper argues that the relationship between statistics and social forms is not solely one of description. To the extent that statistics do not merely study or represent the objects they are purported to be about, but are intimately involved in intervening in/on those objects (e.g. social, economic, or ecological processes) and in fact in remaking them through reform and/or development, they have a performative nature. In this sense, statistics are less a methodology and more a technology—a technology of governance. The paper draws on the fieldwork in Turkey with statisticians, technicians, and agricultural experts working on the design and implementation of EU-inspired reforms to develop new apparatuses for the collection of data on agriculture in the country.
AB - Statistics is one of the chapters in Turkey's EU entry negotiations, and the country is transforming what statistics it collects, using what methodologies, at what intervals, how it publishes them, and how it uses them. It is in light of the new statistical knowledge that the country is reforming its institutions and practices. This paper argues that the relationship between statistics and social forms is not solely one of description. To the extent that statistics do not merely study or represent the objects they are purported to be about, but are intimately involved in intervening in/on those objects (e.g. social, economic, or ecological processes) and in fact in remaking them through reform and/or development, they have a performative nature. In this sense, statistics are less a methodology and more a technology—a technology of governance. The paper draws on the fieldwork in Turkey with statisticians, technicians, and agricultural experts working on the design and implementation of EU-inspired reforms to develop new apparatuses for the collection of data on agriculture in the country.
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U2 - 10.1080/14683849.2014.983690
DO - 10.1080/14683849.2014.983690
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84919846255
SN - 1468-3849
VL - 15
SP - 638
EP - 654
JO - Turkish Studies
JF - Turkish Studies
IS - 4
ER -