Research Catalog

Details

Description

1. 398 pages : illustrations, map; 22 cm

Summary

1. From the Publisher: Americans today "know" that a majority of the population supports the death penalty, that half of all marriages end in divorce, and that four out of five prefer a particular brand of toothpaste. Through statistics like these, we feel that we understand our fellow citizens. But remarkably, such data-now woven into our social fabric-became common currency only in the last century. Sarah Igo tells the story, for the first time, of how opinion polls, man-in-the-street interviews, sex surveys, community studies, and consumer research transformed the United States public. Igo argues that modern surveys, from the Middletown studies to the Gallup Poll and the Kinsey Reports, projected new visions of the nation: authoritative accounts of majorities and minorities, the mainstream and the marginal. They also infiltrated the lives of those who opened their doors to pollsters, or measured their habits and beliefs against statistics culled from strangers. Survey data underwrote categories as abstract as "the average American" and as intimate as the sexual self. With a bold and sophisticated analysis, Igo demonstrates the power of scientific surveys to shape Americans' sense of themselves as individuals, members of communities, and citizens of a nation. Tracing how ordinary people argued about and adapted to a public awash in aggregate data, she reveals how survey techniques and findings became the vocabulary of mass society-and essential to understanding who we, as modern Americans, think we are.

Subject

1. 1900-1999
2. Social conditions
3. Social surveys > United States > History > 20th century
4. National characteristics, American
5. Enquêtes sociales > États-Unis > Histoire > 20e siècle
6. Américains
7. National characteristics, American
8. Social surveys
9. Opinieonderzoek
10. Survey-onderzoek
11. Publieke opinie
12. Burgerschap
13. Massengesellschaft
14. Demoskopie
15. Öffentliche Meinung
16. Enquêtes sociales - États-Unis - Histoire - 20e siècle
17. Soziologie
18. Nationalkaraktär > Förenta staterna
19. United States > Social conditions > 20th century
20. États-Unis > Conditions sociales > 20e siècle
21. United States
22. Verenigde Staten
23. USA
24. États-Unis - Conditions sociales - 20e siècle
25. USA
26. Förenta staterna > sociala förhållanden > 1900-talet

Genre/Form

1. History

Contents

1. List of illustrations -- Introduction: America in aggregate -- 1: Canvassing a "typical" community -- 2: Middletown becomes everytown -- 3: Polling the average populace -- 4: Majority talks back -- 5: Surveying normal selves -- 6: Private lives of the public -- Epilogue: Statistical citizens -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

Owning institution

1. Harvard Library

Bibliography (note)

1. Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-378) and index.

Processing action (note)

1. committed to retain