Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:42:32.603Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Numeracy or Enumeration?

The Uses of Numbers by States and Societies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Rebecca Jean Emigh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Quantification is often taken to be a hallmark of modern society and science. This is perhaps no where more obvious than in social science disciplines, marked by often heated debates about whether quantitative methods illuminate or obscure social reality. Quantification itself depends upon numeracy, that is, the ability to count, keep records of these counts, and make rational calculations. Thus, numeracy, like its more frequently studied counterpart, literacy, is central to modern life, both inside and outside of academia.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , Winter 2002 , pp. 653 - 698
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2002 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Archivio del Catasto (AC) (1427). Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Florence, Italy.Google Scholar
Diplomatico. Agostiniani di Montecatini and Strozziani Galletti.Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Florence, Italy.Google Scholar
Mediceo avanti il principato (MAP). Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Florence, Italy.Google Scholar
Notarile antecosimiano (NA). Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Florence, Italy.Google Scholar
Ospedale di San Matteo. Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Florence, Italy.[Secondary Sources]Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Ardant, Gabriel (1975) “Financial policy and the economic infrastructure of modern states and nations,” in Charles, Tilly (ed.) The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 164–242.Google Scholar
Asad, Talal (1994) “Ethnographic representation, statistics and modern power.” Social Research 61: 55–88.Google Scholar
Balestracci, Duccio (1984) La zappa e la retorica: Memorie familiari di un contadino toscano del Quattrocento. Florence: Salimbeni.Google Scholar
Banker, James R. (1988) Death in the Community: Memorialization and Confraternities in an Italian Commune in the Late Middle Ages. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Becker, Marvin (1968) Florence in Transition. Vol. 3, Studies in the Rise of the Territorial State. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Benadusi, Giovanna (1996) A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany: Family and Power in the Creation of the State. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Braun, Rudolf (1975) “Taxation, sociopolitical structure, and state-building: Great Britain and Brandenburg-Prussia,” in Charles, Tilly (ed.) The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 243–327.Google Scholar
Brown, Judith C. (1982) In the Shadow of Florence: Provincial Society in Renaissance Pescia. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Brucker, Gene (1993) “Florentine voices from the Catasto, 1427-1480.” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 5: 11–32.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter (1987) The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Carruthers, Bruce G., and Wendy, Nelson Espeland (1991)“Accounting for rationality: Double-entry bookkeeping and the rhetoric of economic rationality.” American Journal of Sociology 97: 31–69.Google Scholar
Chittolini, Giorgio (1979) La formazione dello stato regionale e le istituzioni del contado: Secoli XIV e XV. Turin: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Cicourel, Aaron V. (1974) Theory and Method in a Study of Argentine Fertility. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar
Clanchy, M. T. (1993 [1979]) From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307. 2d ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Clayman, Steven E., and John, Heritage (in press) “Questioning presidents: Journalistic deference and adversarialness in the press conferences of Eisenhower and Reagan.” Journal of Communication 52 (4).Google Scholar
Cline, Cohen Patricia (1982) A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cohn, Bernard S. (1987) An Anthropologist among the Historians and Other Essays. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cohn, Samuel K. Jr. (1992) The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Cohn, Samuel K. Jr. (1996) Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Comaroff, John, and Jean, Comaroff (1992) Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
Conti, Elio (1966) I catasti agrari della Repubblica fiorentina e il catasto particellare toscano (Secoli XIV-XIX). Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo.Google Scholar
Crosby, Alfred W. (1997) The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Denley, Peter (1990) “Governments and schools in late medieval Italy,” in Trevor, Dean and Chris, Wickham (eds.) City and Countryside in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy London: Hambledon: 93–107.Google Scholar
Desrosières, Alain (1998) The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jean, Rebecca Emigh (1996) “Loans and livestock: Comparing landlords’ and tenants’ declarations from the Catasto of 1427.” Journal of European Economic History 25: 705–23.Google Scholar
Jean, Rebecca Emigh (1997) “The spread of sharecropping in Tuscany: The political economy of transaction costs.” American Sociological Review 62: 423–42.Google Scholar
Jean, Rebecca Emigh (1999) “The length of leases: Short-term contracts and long-term relationships.” Viator 30: 345–82.Google Scholar
Jean, Rebecca Emigh (2000) “The gender division of labour: The case of Tuscan smallholders.” Continuity and Change 15: 117–37.Google Scholar
Englund, Robert K. (1991) “Hard work—where will it get you? Labor management in Ur III Mesopotamia.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 50: 255–80.Google Scholar
Nelson, Wendy Espeland, and Stevens, Mitchell L. (1998)“Commensuration as a social process.” Annual Review of Sociology 24: 313–43.Google Scholar
Fabbri, Lorenzo (2000) “Patronage and its role in government: The Florentine patriciate and Volterra,” in Connell, William J. and Andrea, Zorzi (eds.) Florentine Tuscany: Structures and Practices of Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 225–41.Google Scholar
Fiumi, Enrico (1957) “L'imposta diretta nei comuni medioevali della Toscana>,” in Studi in onore di Armando Sapori. Milan: Instituto editoriale cisalpino: 329–53.,”+in+Studi+in+onore+di+Armando+Sapori.+Milan:+Instituto+editoriale+cisalpino:+329–53.>Google Scholar
Fiumi, Enrico (1959) “Fioritura e decadenza dell'economia fiorentina.” Archivio storico italiano 117: 429–502.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel (1990 [1978]) The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Furet, François, and Jacques, Ozouf (1982) Reading and Writing: Literacy in France from Calvin to Jules Ferry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold (1974) “The origins of the term ‘ethnomethodology,’” in Roy, Turner (ed.) Ethnomethodology. Baltimore, MD: Penguin.Google Scholar
Gay, John, and Michael, Cole (1967) The New Mathematics and an Old Culture: A Study of Learning among the Kpelle of Liberia. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Goldthwaite, Richard A. (1972) “Schools of teachers of commercial arithmetic in Renaissance Florence.” Journal of European Economic History 1: 418–43.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack (1986) The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goody, Jack, and Ian, Watt (1963) “The consequences of literacy.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5: 304–45.Google Scholar
Graff, Harvey J. (1987) The Legacies of Literacy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Grendler, Paul F. (1989) Schooling in Renaissance Italy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian (1982) “Biopower and the avalanche of printed numbers.” Humanities in Society 5: 279–95.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian (1990) The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Henderson, John (1997) Piety and Charity in Late Medieval Florence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Herlihy, David, and Christiane, Klapisch-Zuber (1978) Les Toscans et leurs familles: Une etude du “catasto” florentin de 1427. Paris: Fondation nationale des sciences politiques.Google Scholar
Herlihy, David, and Christiane, Klapisch-Zuber (1981a) Census and Property Survey of Florentine Domains in the Province of Tuscany, 1427-1480 [machine-readable data file]. Madison: University of Wisconsin, Data and Program Library Service.Google Scholar
Herlihy, David, and Christiane, Klapisch-Zuber (1981b) Census and Property Survey of the Diocese of Florence, Italy, 1427 [machine-readable data file]. Madison: University of Wisconsin, Data and Program Library Service.Google Scholar
Herlihy, David, and Christiane, Klapisch-Zuber (1985) Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Hoggart, Richard (1957) The Uses of Literacy. London: Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
Hyde, J. K. (1993) Literacy and Its Uses: Studies on Late Medieval Italy. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Istituto della enciclopedia italiana (1969) Lessico universale italiano. Vol. 21. Umberto, Bosco (ed.) Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana.Google Scholar
Rehner, Roberta Iversen, Furstenberg, Frank F. Jr., and Belzer, Alisa A. (1999) “How much do we count? Interpretation and error-making in the decennial densus.” Demography 36: 121–34.Google Scholar
Jones, Philip J. (1968) “From manor to mezzadria: A Tuscan case-study in the medieval origins of modern agrarian society,” in Rubinstein, Nicolai (ed.) Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press: 193–241.Google Scholar
Jones, Philip J. (1997) The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Kirshner, Julius (ed.) (1995) The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300-1600. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kowalewski, Stephen A., and Saindon, Jacqueline J. (1992) “The spread of literacy in a Latin American peasant society: Oaxaca, Mexico, 1890-1980.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 34: 110–40.Google Scholar
Lave, Jean (1988) Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics, and Culture in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Giovanni (1988) Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Levi, Margaret (1988) Of Rule and Revenue. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Marshall, Richard K. (1999) The Local Merchants of Prato: Small Entrepreneurs in the Late Medieval Economy. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Serena, Maria Mazzi, and Sergio, Raveggi (1983) Gli uomini e le cose nelle campagne fiorentine del Quattrocento. Florence: Olschki.Google Scholar
Melis, Federigo (1984) I vini italiani nel medioevo. Florence: Le Monnier.Google Scholar
Menninger, Karl (1969) Number Words and Number Symbols: A Cultural History of Numbers. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mills, Geofrey T. (1994) “Early accounting in northern Italy: The role of commercial development and the printing press in the expansion of double-entry from Genoa, Florence and Venice.”Accounting Historians Journal 21 (1): 81–96.Google Scholar
Molho, Anthony (1988) “Deception and marriage strategy in Renaissance Florence: The case of women's ages.” Renaissance Quarterly 41: 193–217.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. (1981) Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C., and Robert, Paul Thomas (1973) The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nunes, Terezinha, Dias, Schliemann Analucia, and Carraher, David William (1993) Street Mathematics and School Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Petrucci, Armando (1995) Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture. Radding, Charles M. (ed. and trans.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl (1957 [1944]) The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl (1957) “The economy as instituted process,” in Karl, Polanyi, Arensberg, Conrad M., and Pearson, Harry W. (eds.) Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory. New York: Free Press: 243–70.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. (1995) Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Technology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Repetti, Emanuele (1969 [1839]) Dizionario geografico fisico, storico della Toscana, contenente la descrizione di tutti i luoghi del Granducato, Ducato di Lucca, Garfagnana e Lunigiana, Vol.3. Rome: Multigrafica Editrice.Google Scholar
Rogoff, Barbara, and Jean, Lave (eds.) (1984) Everyday Cognition: Its Development in Social Context. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
de Roover, Raymond (1963) The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Rotman, Brian (1987) Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero. New York: St. Martin's.Google Scholar
Warre, David Sabean (1990) Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sacks, Harvey (1988-89) “On members’ measurement systems.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 22: 45–60.Google Scholar
Saxe, Geoffrey B. (1985) “Effects of schooling on arithmetical understandings: Studies with Oksapmin children in Papua New Guinea.” Journal of Educational Psychology 77: 503–13.Google Scholar
Saxe, Geoffrey B. (1988) “The mathematics of child street vendors.” Child Development 59: 1415–25.Google Scholar
Scribner, Sylvia, and Michael, Cole (1981) The Psychology of Literacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Soltow, Lee, and Edward, Stevens (1981) The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States: A Socioeconomic Analysis to 1870. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Spyer, Patricia (1996) “Serial conversion/conversion to seriality: Religion, state, and number in Aru, Eastern Indonesia,” in van der Veer, Peter (ed.) Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity. New York: Routledge: 171–98.Google Scholar
Starr, Paul (1987) “The sociology of official statistics,” in William, Alonso and Paul, Starr (eds.) The Politics of Numbers. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 7–57.Google Scholar
Ikins, Laura Stern (1994) The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Sudnow, David (1967) Passing On: The Social Organization of Dying. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Swetz, Frank J. (1987) Capitalism and Arithmetic: The New Math of the 15th Century. La Salle, IL: Open Court.Google Scholar
Szelényi, Iván, and Eric, Kostello (1996)“The market transition debate: Toward a synthesis?”American Journal of Sociology 101: 1082–96.Google Scholar
Szreter, Simon R. S. (1986) “The genesis of the registrar-general's social classification of occupations.”British Journal of Sociology 35: 522–45.Google Scholar
Thomas, Keith (1987) “Numeracy in early modern England.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 37: 103–32.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (1992) Coercion, Capital, and European States, ad 990-1992. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Tilly, Charles (1999) “Power—top down and bottom up.” Journal of Political Philosophy 7: 330–52.Google Scholar
Weber, Max (1978) Economy and Society. Guenther, Roth and Claus, Wittich (eds.). Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Wickham, Chris (1994) Land and Power: Studies in Italian and European Social History, 400-1200. London: British School at Rome.Google Scholar
Wickham, Chris (1998) Community and Clientele in Twelfth-Century Tuscany: The Origins of the Rural Commune in the Plain of Lucca. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Woolf, Stuart J. (1984) “Towards the history of the origins of statistics: France, 1789-1815,” in State and Statistics in France, 1789-1815. Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers: 81–194.Google Scholar