Making Up Soldiers: The Role of Statistical Oversight and Reactive Path Dependence in the Effectiveness of Canada's WWII Mobilization Program 1940-1943.

This paper demonstrates how specific surveillance technologies adopted in Canada during the Second World War enabled state actors to successfully conscript individuals into the Armed Forces. In 1940 the Federal government initiated a National Registration of all those under the age of sixteen living within the Dominion. Soon after, collected data were processed and certain populations were identified to be called into the Armed Forces. Although conscription had officially begun in 1940, a reorganization of the National Registration and mobilization system initiated in 1942 brought a new array of statistics-focused surveillance technologies into the procedure of selecting, calling men into service, and ensuring compliance with issued mobilization orders. These changes led to significant increases in the number of men that were successfully conscripted per month, pointing to the capacity of these new policies and technologies to assert greater statistical oversight and management over system staff as well as its target populations. This paper argues that the observable change in the effectiveness of the National Registration and mobilization system to conscript identified individuals into the Armed Forces came as a result of the new set of surveillance technologies adopted in March 1942. Specifically, these changes prompted a new means of statistical oversight and management, while they also worked to develop of a form of reactive path dependence in how data flowed within mobilization offices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]