Statistical Imaginaries, State Legitimacy: Grappling with the Arrangements Underpinning Quantification in the U.S. Census

2026-02-20

AI Summary

This study addresses why certain new statistical methods in the U.S. decennial census provoke enduring controversy while others gain swift acceptance. By comparing public and stakeholder responses to imputation, adjustment, data swapping, and differential privacy, the paper proposes an analytical framework termed “the arrangement of statistical imaginaries.” This framework elucidates how technical methodologies reshape societal understandings of data legitimacy, demonstrating that census credibility hinges not only on statistical accuracy but also on the contested processes through which statistical imaginaries are negotiated and stabilized. The research underscores the pivotal role of socio-technical interactions in constructing the legitimacy of official statistics.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Reasoning under Uncertainty: Causality
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Preferences

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Social Networks and Social Media: Fairness and bias in social network and social media analysis

Abstract

Over the last century, the adoption of novel scientific methods for conducting the U.S. census has been met with wide-ranging receptions. Some methods were quietly embraced, while others sparked decades-long controversies. What accounts for these differences? We argue that controversies emerge from $\textit{arrangements of statistical imaginaries}$, putting into tension divergent visions of the census. To analyze these dynamics, we compare reactions to two methods designed to improve data accuracy (imputation and adjustment) and two methods designed to protect confidentiality (swapping and differential privacy), offering insight into how each method reconfigures stakeholder orientations and rhetorical claims. These cases allow us to reflect on how technocratic efforts to improve accuracy and confidentiality can strengthen -- or erode -- trust in data. Our analysis shows how the credibility of the Census Bureau and its data stem not just from empirical evaluations of quantification, but also from how statistical imaginaries are contested and stabilized.

Problem

• statistical imaginaries
• census controversies
• quantification
• state legitimacy
• data trust

Innovation

• statistical imaginaries
• census methodology
• data trustworthiness
• differential privacy
• state legitimacy