Statistical Innovation in the Global South

What is it about?

This article compares how statistical infrastructures migrate from the Global North to the Global South. Paying particular attention to population censuses, the investigation analyzes what social forces, transport, translate, and adapt statistical innovations. There are four mechanisms utilized in the transmission of statistical innovations: interventionist impulses from International Organizations, commercial and institutional brokerage, professional communities, and effects of political instabilities. The investigation compares the cases of Ecuador, Brazil, Ghana, and Sierra Leona to identify how the Global South is a heterogeneous social space that requires differentiated treatments not only in the process of statistical innovations but also in the very process of production of public statistics. In the same way, the analysis confirms hierarchical processes that diminish the role of local communities in procedures of construction of statistics that define their own identities.

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