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Statistics are, as the etymology of the term suggests (state-istics), intimately connected with the construction or administration of the nation-state. This paper addresses the genesis and development of the nation-state by studying one of the main instruments that states use to ‘embrace’ their populations, viz. population statistics. More particularly, the paper presents a critical analysis of the conceptual and ‘scientific’ representations of modes of belonging to the nation-state as produced in the Belgian (Queteletian) population censuses from the mid-nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century. It is shown how the analyses of the statisticians' interests, techniques and classification schemes shed light on the various ways in which inclusion in, or exclusion from, the Belgian nation-state have been articulated in its population censuses. It is argued that these shifting interests and classification schemes also inform us about the construction and administration of the contemporary nation-state.

Statisticsoriginally meantstate-istics, a scientific representation of the state for governmental purposes. It did not just cover the growing need for information in the emerging nation-states, but also contributed to establishing a new idea of government. This paper analyzes the rearticulation of the household within modern state-istics. The Belgian population censuses, which were first organized by Adolphe Quetelet, provide the material for our analyses. More particularly, we focus on the period from the mid-nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century, when the welfare state started to develop alternatives to household dependence. We discuss how the orientation shifted from thede factoto thede jurepopulation; the state became involved in redefining the conditions for household membership. Two types of co-residential units were distinguished: family household and collective household. But inmates of collective households caused much concern; statisticians tried to reassign them administratively to households considered more appropriate. We also discuss the articulation of intrahousehold relations. Changes in the notion of “belongingness” show how the state articulated its expectations regarding the proverbial cornerstones of society.

This chapter focuses on the different parameters of nation-ness and citizenship underlying the Belgian population censuses. Three different items have been connected with the nation state as such in the Belgian censuses: language, place of birth and nationality. The chapter shows how language has become the source of relatively strong social and cultural cleavages within the Belgian nation state - as exemplified by the well-known tensions between its different linguistic communities in the second half of the twentieth century. It analyses the ways in which data about each individual's birthplace and nationality were collected and processed. These analyses also show how imaginaries of national identity correspond with changing state-istical interests in managing and controlling migration in a world characterized by increasing transnational mobility. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the historical and contemporary relevance of author's analysis of parameters of nation-ness and citizenship for the project of nation-building and imagining the nation state within Belgium.

During most of the nineteenth century, the etymology of the term ‘statistics’ was still much alive: statistics was state-istics, the empirical study of the state. It has been argued that the nineteenth-century avalanche of printed numbers gave rise to a new discourse about society. Not only was society conceived of as a population; the corps social (Quetelet) was also conceptualized as a subject of statistics. An important contribution of this state-istics was to conceive a new sort of object, which could be both the target of research and of policy interventions. On the basis of a case-study of all the Belgian population censuses taken before the Second World War, we attempt to articulate the complex interactions between science, government, and society in the modern era. We thereby direct our attention to the range of exclusions and exclusion places that appeared in these censuses. Our analysis highlights the intimate relationship between population and territory in the ‘search engines’ of the statisticians. The discursive constitution of territorial exclusions allows us to analyse the articulation of inclusion ideals – in the period before such ideals became firmly institutionalized in the so-called welfare state of the postwar period.