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This paper attempts to illustrate the utility of regarding the census more as a 'narrative source'[10] than as a statistical one. Attention is paid to the character of the classificatory devices employed, not for the ambiguities contained in them and consequent levels of error, but for their substantive character and what they reveal about the contemporary social setting. The paper starts from the assumption that the census is a social product, both arising from and reflecting the social concerns of an era. As such it may be said to mirror the dominant values of the time, among which will be values concerning occupations, their legitimacy, their boundaries and their social worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most curious omissions in the sociology of work and occupations is what would seem to be one of the most basic questions: When is an occupation an occupation? While there have been recent attempt to explore the issue by examining the history of census categories,[1] these represent the end-point of the process at which new occupations receive official recognition and legitimation. My purpose in this paper is to discuss how occupations form and come to be recognized as such. The creation of health visiting between 1850 and 1919 will be taken as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents response of the author on the comments made by Trevor W. Jones on occupational transition. The author opines that comments made by Jones raises two basic types of objection: first, that theories about occupational transition cannot in principle be represented or applied in the way that the author has proposed in and second, that even if that were not true, the way in which the author has carried out the exercise with the census data is not acceptable. It is opined that if the theories of occupational transition are meant to describe some kind of historical reality, then they must yield propositions. The author informs that his article on occupational transition was not about its outcome but was explicitly about the form it has taken in Great Britain, and the failure of a certain type of theory to account for it. The author opines that Jones is fully justified in asking for more technical information on the census data but his doubts about the validity of the time-series are exaggerated.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions identifying foreigners have been included in official statistics since the census of 1841 when place of birth was first asked. This question has since been used in many sources. It was later supplemented by a question on each parent's birthplace so that the children of immigrants could be identified. More recently, direct questions on ethnic origin have been introduced. One notable exception to the use of a direct question is the census, which for political reasons has so far been unable to include such a question. The Home Affairs Committee recommended that a direct question be asked in the next census, and also recommended a form of that question. This recommended form is technically poor. In light of the political objections to a direct question, there is a need to address political issues rather than dwell on technical detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that census reports provide a rich source of documentary evidence on social change in Britain--a source that has so far remained relatively untapped. The census reports for the nineteenth century can be regarded as the precursors of the Central Statistical Office's annual Social Trends reports, which incorporate summaries of census results as well as other data. Similarly the early census reports include a range of additional data showing trends in health (as reflected in mortality statistics), education and religion (as shown in the 1851 education and religious censuses) and other aspects of social and economic life.[5]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on an article titled "Occupational Transition in Advanced Industrial Societies," authored by Geoff Payne. The author opines that Payne, in his article, was confronting theories relating to modernization with data from an inappropriate period. And in any case there are difficulties inherent in the manner in which Payne has approached the industrialization literature. Although the author has argued that much of Payne's effort has been misplaced, since he is confronting a loosely specified theory with data from an inappropriate period, he would agree that the compilation of a new time-series of occupational data is in itself is a worthwhile task in principle. However, there are serious reservations which must be made about Payne's use of the Census data in doing this. Relying on census figures spanning the years 1921 to 1971 and deciding to employ the categorization of socio-econoxnic groups used by the authorities in 1971, Payne found it necessary to recode the occupational data from the earlier censuses.