This thesis has been submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MPhil, DClinPsychol) at the University of Edinburgh. Please note the following terms and conditions of use: • This work is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights, which are retained by the thesis author, unless otherwise stated. • A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author. • The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. • When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. The State and Spaces of Official Labour Statistics in the Federal Republic of Germany, c.1950-1973 Jochen F. Mayer PhD Dissertation The University of Edinburgh 2012 Contents Contents .................................................................................................................................................. i List of Scans and Table ........................................................................................................................ vi Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................. vii Declaration of Originality .................................................................................................................... ix Glossary of Abbreviations .................................................................................................................... x Abstract of Thesis ............................................................................................................................... xii 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................ 2 1.1. Interpreting Statistics and Statistical Procedure ......................................................................... 3 1.2. The Context of the Thesis .............................................................................................................. 5 1.3. The Structure and Focus of the Thesis ....................................................................................... 11 1.4. Notes on Procedure: Translation, Abbreviations, and Appendices ......................................... 16 2. TOWARDS A HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY OF TWENTIETH- CENTURY OFFICIAL STATISTICS ......................................................... 18 2.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 19 2.2. Twentieth-Century Statistics as a Boundary Object between Sciences and the State ............ 23 2.2.1. Critical Evaluation I: Foucault’s Governmentality and Statistics ................................... 25 2.2.2. Critical Evaluation II: Governmentality Studies on Statistics ......................................... 32 2.2.3. Beyond Foucault and the Foucauldians: Remarks on Official Statistics and Censuses ................................................................................................................................ 36 2.3. A ‘Politics of Statistics’ ................................................................................................................ 39 2.3.1. A Politics of Statistics: Statistical Forms and Political Orders in the Pragmatist Mode ...................................................................................................................................... 41 2.3.2. The Wider Context: Issues of Evaluation and Moral Justification .................................. 44 2.4. Truth and Accuracy in Statistics: Trust, Discipline and Power ............................................... 49 2.4.1. Quantification: Coding and Counting ................................................................................ 51 2.4.2. The Materiality of Statistical Practice ................................................................................ 53 2.4.3. Statistical Reasoning and Social Debate: Science vs. Politics ........................................... 56 2.5. Objectification and Objectivity as a Scientific Concept ............................................................ 59 2.6. Survey versus Administrative Registers: The two Sources of Official Statistics..................... 68 2.7. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 71 i 3. HISTORY, METHOD, AND ARCHIVE: OFFICAL LABOUR STATISTICS, INSTIUTIONS, PEOPLES, AND DISCOURSES IN GERMANY C.1890-1973 .......................................................................... 76 3.1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 77 3.2. From Situated Unemployment to a Socio-National Category 1890-1933 ................................ 80 3.3. The Destruction of the Labour Administration and the Birth of a New Database 1933- 1945 ............................................................................................................................................... 88 3.4. The Re-establishment of the Labour Administartion After 1945 ............................................ 91 3.4.1. Extensions During the Post-1945 Period: Unemployment for Everyone ......................... 93 3.4.2. The Idea and Concept of the Representative Sample in the German Post-war Context .................................................................................................................................. 96 3.4.3. Mikrozensus: The Statistical Unemployed (Erwerbslose) of the Federal Statistical Office ................................................................................................................................... 101 3.5. Official Statistics in West Germany: Official, Social, and Mathematical Statisticians and Institutional Spaces .................................................................................................................... 103 3.5.1. The Federal Statistical Office – Organisation and Functioning ..................................... 107 3.5.2. The German Statistical Society ......................................................................................... 109 3.5.3. Official Statisticians and Official Statistics ...................................................................... 111 3.5.4. Social and Economic Statisticians in Post-war Germany: The ‘Frankfurt School’ ..... 115 3.5.5. The Mathematical Statisticians ......................................................................................... 117 3.6. On Statistical Machines and (Non-)Punched File Cards ........................................................ 120 3.8. Planning, Economisation of Statistics, and (Employment) Forecasts during the 1960s ....... 130 3.8.1. ‘The Decade of Planning and Feasibility’ as an Attempt to Cognitively Master Economy and Society ......................................................................................................... 131 3.8.2. Economics and Statistics as Resource for Each Other .................................................... 136 3.8.3. Economic and Employment Forecasts as a Mode of Government ................................. 139 3.9. ‘My’ Archive ............................................................................................................................... 143 3.10. Methods ..................................................................................................................................... 146 4. ON THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF WEST-GERMAN LABOUR STATISTICS: CREATING FACTS AND FIGURES AND SITUATIONS OF CONFLICT 1949-1956 ..................................................................... 152 4.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 153 4.2. The Re-Establishment and Nature of Labour Statistics 1945-1950 ....................................... 155 4.3. The Discursivation of the Files .................................................................................................. 159 4.3.1. Filed Information between State Power and Labour Administration ........................... 162 4.3.2. Drawing Legal and Organisational Boundaries Around the Files ................................. 164 4.4. Creating Facts and Figures: The BAVAV Labour Statistics as an Ordered Instrument of Order .......................................................................................................................................... 169 4.4.1. Creating the File (Arbeitnehmerkartei) and the ‘Occupational Personality’ ................. 170 4.4.2. Creating the Statistics and Making (Un-)Employment Visible: Announcing, Tallying and Counting....................................................................................................................... 177 ii 4.5. The Alphabet in the File ............................................................................................................ 182 4.6. The Absence of Statistical Machines in the Labour Administration ..................................... 185 4.7. How to Arrive at Uniform Concepts