ABSTRACT
How do societies react when a population census is politically intervened? What institutions are essential to defend a census? Population censuses are sociotechnical objects and products of practices within and between political contingencies. These procedures – publicized as being open and democratic while in practice being closed and technocratic – start long before the production of public statistics. They follow tangled bureaucratic courses of action involving public servants, consultants, politicians, activists, and journalists. This implies that their outcomes are influenced by power inequalities and conflicts over fields with heterogeneous set of capitals previously distributed. Consequently, the analysis of censuses requires the objectivation of its diversities, hierarchies, contradictions, controversies, and points of encounter. The 2020 census round exposed an opportunity to study these struggles. The United States, Brazil, and Ecuador faced two types of exceptional crises during the 2020 census round: a general one related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a specific one related to political interventions by their respective governments. This convergence permitted a comparative analysis centered on the search for who the actors involved in the interventions are, the utilized mechanisms, and the way in which societies react. Through a systematic analysis of archives, media reports, and in-depth interviews, I argue that, despite the different institutional and historical contexts, local crises are related to the dynamics of change in political power at a national level. Similarly, (1) a functional legal system is essential for avoiding the intervention, and (2) an organized society aware of the interventions is crucial for activating a response. More broadly, the chapter presents evidence of why censuses are far from being objective or unbiased, and that they are, in fact, sensitive devices, subject to ample opportunities for political intervention.
