Silvana Patriarca’s “Numbers and Nationhood – Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy” (aka ‘statistics without numbers’)
Silvana Patriarca’s “Numbers and Nationhood – Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy” (aka ‘statistics without numbers’)
(June 26, 2011)
Professor Patiarca’s book is a very important book, especially for students of southern-Italian descent. However, it is a very very difficult read that matter-of-factly evokes concepts of philosophy (“epistemology” & “ontology”), logic (“deductive” & “inductive”) and statistics (“ratio”, “proportions”, etc). One wonders where students will find the master teachers necessary to guide them through this challenging history of nineteenth century Italy? ‘Italian Studies’ is limited to the Renaissance! ‘Italian American Studies’ is limited to America! And, in American university history departments, statistics is generally verboten! Thus, while Italian American bourgeois and literati celebrate Tuscan hegemony and the grand-opening of “Eatalia”, southern-Italian American students wander like Diogenes with his lantern searching for knowledge of their Patria Meridionale.
Mirrors and Chairs
before the mirror
a man of some years
no doubt!
behind the mirror
a boy of eternal years
shouts!
before Chairs of Wisdom
the man
does not understand.
for the boy
there’s no mistak’n it
“The Emperor is Naked!”
Preface
Textual Criticism vs. Exegesis
Silvana Patriarca’s book is a truly amazing work of ‘brut force’ scholarship. Her
Bibliography lists 586 entries with
286 nineteenth century primary sources including 10 manuscripts and
300 secondary sources;
Footnotes numbering 751
many annotated with multiple references (e.g. p.71 fn. 40 has 17 references).
One would think that such a prodigious bibliography and footnote list would yield, if not a multivolume work, then at least a very large single volume. On the contrary, the book is nominally 240 pages long. Nominally in that, if the 751 footnotes were removed to endnote pages, there would be significantly less narrative pages - perhaps in the range of 220 pages.
Scant text is, to my mind, a very significant shortcoming of the book – too much factual data, analysis, discussion and parenthetical comments crammed into too few pages. Sentences cry for pages of elaboration.
Accordingly, attempting to summarize the logic of the author’s thesis is like trying to describe a metamorphous – just when the form seems understandable, in the next page it changes. My reading of the book resulted in pages marked up with four different color markers, penciled marginally and copious notes. Analysis of the text based on my historiographic background in both the “Critical Method” and “Quantitative Methods” was not working for me.
Finally, I resorted to a technique from biblical exegesis. I realized that one word reoccurred very frequently. “Representation” occurs 70 times in the 240 pages (an average of once every three and a half pages). With that ‘revelation’ the thesis seemed to emerge from the awesome myriad of facts and discussion.
Statistics without Numbers
The typical historian trained in American universities is quantitatively challenged.
Not to worry!
Ironically, and significantly, a book with the words “Number” and “Statistics” in the title has no numbers, statistics, charts, graphs, calculations, and only three small tables (two in the appendix). This apparent contradiction is the key to understanding what I judge to be the author’s very important thesis:
Social numbers (statistics) both presupposes and conjures ideology!
Introduction - meaning of ‘Representation’
Professor Patriarca’s book begins (literally page 1 paragraph 1) with the word representation:
“When we think about modern states we often envision statistical aggregates [such as] area, population, gross nation product, debt. Yet numbers have not always enjoyed this position, and in fact their rise as a fundamental mode of representation is a relatively recent process.”
(p.1 emp.+ )
As far as I can determine, Prof. Patriarca does not give a precise contextual definition of this key word “representation”. Thus, the meaning of very important phrases such as “mode of representation” are often vague. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to use a common dictionary definition. Representation is:
a) an image or likeness of something;
b) an account or statement of facts or arguments.”
Using these definitions, a “mode of representation” may be understood as:
Statement of facts or arguments about modern states...
Numbers (i.e. statistical aggregates such as population, gross national product, etc) are a mode of representation of modern states...
In short, to ‘represent a state statistically (numerically)’ is to ‘factually describe a state with numbers’. This understanding of the word ‘representation’ clarifies (to my mind) Prof. Patriarca’s stated “purpose in writing the book”:
“To explore the working of statistics as a mode of representation in a specific historical setting...[i.e.] numbers and nationhood in nineteenth-century Italy. (p.12 emp.+)
What needs to be emphasized in this qoute; she writes: “statistics is a mode of representing modern states”. The indefinite article ‘a’ implies that statistics is not the only mode of representing a state.” Prof. Partriarca is making a very important distinction between two writing genre: word and number.
Word Genre vs. Numerical Genre
Traditionally (commonly) states are described (represented) in the word genre with words written in the subject-predicate format.
Statistics describes (represents) states in the numerical genre with numbers ‘written’ in the form of tables, graphics, formulas, etc. Hence, the sub-title of the book “Writing Statistics in Nineteenth-Century Italy”
She posits:
“Statistics refers to...a genre of writing which employed number to describe territorial entities and collectivities (p.5 emp+)
Put another way, her above stated purpose is to “explore” the representation of nineteenth-century Italy in numerical statistical writing genre - as opposed to traditional word writing genre.
Statistics Historically
This process of representing states statistically (describing numerically) is relatively new in the history of modern states. She writes:
“In the late eighteenth and during the nineteenth century, statistics became a widespread practice and attracted the solicitous attention of ruling elites and reformers alike. (p.1 emp.+)
“[Since then,] statistics has risen to a hegemonic status as a mode of representation. [Which is] the reason why we think about modern societies the way we do, namely as aggregates of large numbers
(p. 2 emp.+)
Note: To say, “statistics has risen to a hegemonic status as a mode of representation”implies that it is the (definite article) more common form of representation; i.e. to study modern states entails (necessitates) the study of statistics. This fact is largely lost on the vast majority of historians in the American university system persisting in only reading and writing word genre documents in the sentence-predicate format.
Statistics and Ideology
Description: what reality is – epistemology / ontology
Ideology: what reality ought (is willed) to be – political/economic values
The ‘genre’ of ‘statistical writing’ was not limited to description of reality. Just as with ‘word genre’ writing such as narrative histories, there is an ideological aspect to statistical writing – in short, statistics is not just about numbers – numbers imply ideology. Patriarca:
“Statistics, like any representation, do not merely ‘reflect’,’ but ‘supplement’ reality” (p.5 fn. 15 emp. +)
“Statistical investigation and descriptions were predicated on an idea of the nation as an object to be known, measured, compared, and governed... But statistics also created a particular image of the national space, they gave a body to an abstract entity (p.7 emp.+)
Importantly, elaborating on the concepts of “creating an image” and “giving body to an abstract entity”, she writes:
“...statistical writing has important epistemological and ideological consequences...The way in which numbers construct and visualize entities of various kinds is distinctive and has consequences that go beyond their capacity for manipulation...
“The use of numbers in the representation of the world is predicated upon procedures of classification and separation of the ‘identical’ and the ‘different’ which result in the building of a rigid perception of reality.” (p. 8-9 emp+)
In short, unlike the ideologically pure mathematics of natural sciences, the mathematics of social statistics is not just about numbers and calculations. Numbers and ideology go ‘hand-in-hand’; they cannot be separated. Statistical ‘description’ entails an ideological “perception of reality” and, in turn statistics is used in the “construction and visualization” of reality.
Social Statistics is an historiographic genre of writing the same as traditional historical word narratives in that:
numerical (like word) descriptions are ideologically determined and
numerical (like word) descriptions in turn determine ideology.
As Prof. Partriarca indicated in a very pregnant footnote:
“The notion of representation is not easy to pinpoint especially in its relation to ideology: representations could be seen as parts of ideologies, but they can also in turn ‘contain’ [ideology]...” (p.10 fn.28)
Statistics and Philosophy – the class character of statistics
Elaborating on that footnote: statisticians in nineteenth century Italy purported to objectively describe reality. However, Professor Patriarca raises the perennial problem in the history of philosophy – can ‘reality’ be ‘objectively’ known and described independent of ideological subjectivity.
Is there such a thing as objective description of reality or is all we ‘see’ and ‘describe’ akin to the ‘shadows on the cave wall’ in the Plato’s Republic?
‘Cutting to the chase’, she succinctly and eloquently captures the history of Western Philosophy and then places the nineteenth century Italian class conflict between the ancient aristocracy and the emerging bourgeois in the context of that philosophical tradition:
“What to describe...how to describe it...where to start...where to finish...All the answers to these question are based on ideological presuppositions.
“Far from being idle or pedantic questions they were the terrain on which, during the Restoration, different visions of what the state and society were about confronted each other...the ancien régime confronted a civil society expressing values and ideologies more attuned to a bourgeois world view. The tension could not but be reflected in and shape all practices of representation – and especially one that was so intrinsically political as the one that we are examining. “ (p. 62-63 emp.+)
In short, show me your statistics and I will tell you your class!
Problem with the Book
Herein lays, to my mind, the problem with the book. As noted above, it suffers from too many facts and profound ideas expressed with too few words. Moreover, it is essentially two books in one. One book is developing an historiographic / epistemological philosophy about the nature of what Marc Bloch called “The Historian’s Craft”, and the second book is an application of that philosophy to the study of nineteenth century Italy. Frankly, by ‘lacing’ the two books together, Patriarca sacrifices clarity of both. But, clarity is not a necessary condition of great philosophy or history e.g. Aristotle.
However, clarity is absolutely a necessary condition of pedagogy!
If this book is to have any value to students of southern-Italian descent, then it will take master teachers to draw out its implications for the Patria Meridionale diaspora; specifically, how nineteenth century hegemonic Italian statistics was used as an imperialistic ideological assault on the history and culture of Italians south of Rome.
Statistics and Patria Meridionale
Pre-Risorgimento statistical negation of Partria Meridionale history and culture
Prof. Patriarca describes in great detail how statistical “representations” were ideologically laden hegemonic tools used by statisticians to promote the nationalistic ideal of a unified Italian nation state. This nationalistic statistical representation called “Patriotic Statistics” was predicated on the ideology that all parts of Italy were the same – no significant north south regional difference. For example, she writes:
“...a new genre, which became popular in the 1830s-1850s, namely the genre of the statistical description of Italy in its entirety...(p.123 emp.+)
“...‘private’ statistics became a weapon of the nationalist opposition: ...there was a patriotic statistics which, by studying the whole peninsula, associated the northern provinces to those of the South through numbers. (p. 124 emp.+)
“...several statistical yearbooks in the 1850s produced by intellectuals engaged in the struggle for nation unifications were explicit tools of patriotic propaganda. (p.148)
Importantly, from the Patria Meridionale point of view the so-called “Patriotic Statistics” was an ideologicical negation of millennia history and culture of Italians south of Rome. The unification of Italy was to come about by ideologically obliterating in statistics the heritage south of Rome.
Post-Risorgimento statistical denigration of Patria Meridionale history and culture
After unification, abruptly and with profound irony, in the late nineteenth century the same statistics that had been used to promote the ideal of the unified nation state (i.e. the South was not unique) now supported the “Southern Question” ideology – aka “Italy Ends at the Garigliano”. The South was now pejoratively described as unique and different from northern Italy.
Patriarca writes:
“In the 1870s the governing classes began to articulate social problems of the southern regions in terms of a ‘southern question’ thus asserting the distinctive character of the South as a whole.
“From the beginning of its history as a unitary state, “Italy’ was constructed by the national elites as the opposite of its South.”
(p. 234 emp.+)
Statistics “followed suit”! Numbers were now used to differentiate and denigrate the people south of Rome. For example,
“Alfredo Niceforo who was one of the first to talk of the ‘two Italies...proclaiming his faith in statistics...proceeded to show how North and South exhibited distinctive patterns of crimes, levels of literacy, natality rates, suicides and mortality rates, distribution of modern industry, modes of agriculture.” (p. 236 emp. +)
Conclusion
Statistics as an ideological tool was used in the first half of the nineteenth century to obliterate the distinction between the North and South by promoting the destruction of the centuries old state of “Two Sicilies”. Then in the last half of the century, statistics was use to promote the differences between the North and South and denigrate the millennia old Patria Meridionle history and culture.
In short, statistics is not just about ‘crunching numbers’, it’s a profoundly effective ideological tool in the hands of the political elites. One cannot understand the social history of nineteenth century Italy leading up to the Great Terroni Migration circa 1880-1920 without understanding the statistics of nineteenth century Italy.
Finally, if the profound ideas about the origin of southern-Italian Americana implied in this book are to benefit history students generally and southern-Italian American students particularly, then it has to be rendered pedagogically into a coherent curricula consisting of (what public school teachers call and are unheard of in universities) detailed lesson plans (not to be confused with university ‘course outlines’)
No Teachers – No History – No Culture
(no disrespect to Mario and Lydia, but garish restaurants are not what Meridionale Americana is about!).
Postscript – Statistics and the History Profession
The connection between ‘statistics’ and ‘ideology’ is a very important idea that transcends Prof. Patriarca’s history of nineteenth century Italy, having historiographic implications for the whole history profession in the U.S.
In the American university system, historians have largely ignored statistics as not being something that historians do. After a brief ‘spat’ in the 1970s and 80s when such ground breaking quantitative books as Time On The Cross by Fogel and Engelman led to a great debate about the role of statistics in historiography (e.g. Which Roads to the Past by Fogel and Elton), the profession largely (with a few exceptions) settled back into its so-called humanist tradition of researching non-quantitative documents (diaries, letters, speeches, etc.) and writing sentence-predicate narratives (in the active voice), while ignoring quantitative documents (censuses, economics, crime, mortality, etc.) and shunning history presented in the form of tables, charts, graphs and calculations.
Prof. Patriarca’s book brilliantly and conclusively destroys the prevailing historiographic assumption that statistics (numbers) is outside of the humanist tradition.
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