Natsional’nye debaty ob etnicheskoi statistike: opyt mezhdunarodnykh sravnenii

Abstract

Censuses are considered to be the most important sources providing statistical data on the world population. They are taken to provide answers to two crucial questions: How many of us are there? and What are we like? The article discusses the ways in which censuses of the 2010s contributed to the “portrayal of nations” by collecting data on the racial or ethnic origins/belonging of people. It subjects to critical scrutiny various census categories established and applied in different countries and discusses the profound contradiction between the need for exact and reliable statistical figures, and the increasingly subjective notion of ethnicity the stems from the preference given to opinions expressed by survey respondents. The authors point to the performative effect that ethnic and racial categories exert as they contribute to the preservation of old or delimitation of new ethnic or racial boundaries within nation states. Authors: Elena Filippova, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Russian Academy of Sciences