TY - JOUR

T1 - Doing statistics, enacting the nation

T2 - The performative powers of categories

AU - Grommé, Francisca

AU - Scheel, Stephan

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020 The Authors. Nations and Nationalism published by Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

PY - 2020/7/1

Y1 - 2020/7/1

N2 - It has been widely acknowledged in debates about nationalism and ethnicity that identity categories used for classifying people along the lines of culture, race, and ethnicity help to enact, that is, bring into being, the collective identities they name. However, we know little about how categories acquire their performative powers. The contribution of this paper is twofold: first, it proposes a conceptual framework based on concepts and insights from science and technology studies for investigating the performative powers of statistical identity categories and possibly also other domains. Second, it demonstrates, through an empirical study of two examples from Estonian and Dutch official population statistics, that statistical identity categories enact more than the groups to which they refer. We argue that they also enact national identities and notions of national belonging of majoritarian groups in the host countries. Therefore, statistical identity categories can be used as analytical lenses to study nationalism and processes of nation-building.

AB - It has been widely acknowledged in debates about nationalism and ethnicity that identity categories used for classifying people along the lines of culture, race, and ethnicity help to enact, that is, bring into being, the collective identities they name. However, we know little about how categories acquire their performative powers. The contribution of this paper is twofold: first, it proposes a conceptual framework based on concepts and insights from science and technology studies for investigating the performative powers of statistical identity categories and possibly also other domains. Second, it demonstrates, through an empirical study of two examples from Estonian and Dutch official population statistics, that statistical identity categories enact more than the groups to which they refer. We argue that they also enact national identities and notions of national belonging of majoritarian groups in the host countries. Therefore, statistical identity categories can be used as analytical lenses to study nationalism and processes of nation-building.

KW - categories

KW - Estonia

KW - identity politics

KW - national identity

KW - Netherlands

KW - performativity

KW - statistics

KW - Sociology

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85079710267&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/nana.12596

DO - 10.1111/nana.12596

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 32999588

AN - SCOPUS:85079710267

VL - 26

SP - 576

EP - 593

JO - Nations and Nationalism

JF - Nations and Nationalism

SN - 1354-5078

IS - 3

ER -