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Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public

Name: Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public
Brand: Harvard University Press
SKU: 9780674027428
Price: 29.99 USD
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Contributors:

Sarah E. Igo

Publisher:

Harvard University Press

Binding:

Paperback

Book Category:

Social Science, History

Book Subcategory:

Demography, Statistics, United States

Book Topic:

20th Century

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The product is eligible for a complimentary return within 30 days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, individual items are shipped within 24 hours of receiving the order.

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Specifications +

Release Date:

2008-04-01

ISBN 13:

9780674027428

Weight:

1.01 lbs

Size:

7.98 x 5.28 x 1.06 inches

Pages:

408

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product description

Description

Americans today "know" that a majority of the population supports the death penalty, that half of all marriages end in divorce, and that four out of five prefer a particular brand of toothpaste. Through statistics like these, we feel that we understand our fellow citizens. But remarkably, such data--now woven into our social fabric--became common currency only in the last century. Sarah Igo tells the story, for the first time, of how opinion polls, man-in-the-street interviews, sex surveys, community studies, and consumer research transformed the United States public.

Igo argues that modern surveys, from the Middletown studies to the Gallup Poll and the Kinsey Reports, projected new visions of the nation: authoritative accounts of majorities and minorities, the mainstream and the marginal. They also infiltrated the lives of those who opened their doors to pollsters, or measured their habits and beliefs against statistics culled from strangers. Survey data underwrote categories as abstract as "the average American" and as intimate as the sexual self.

With a bold and sophisticated analysis, Igo demonstrates the power of scientific surveys to shape Americans' sense of themselves as individuals, members of communities, and citizens of a nation. Tracing how ordinary people argued about and adapted to a public awash in aggregate data, she reveals how survey techniques and findings became the vocabulary of mass society--and essential to understanding who we, as modern Americans, think we are.

About the Author
Igo, Sarah E.: - Sarah E. Igo is the Andrew Jackson Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Vanderbilt University.