# Steam Powered Census



## somnambulist (Apr 13, 2011)

By Graham Harwood

The census stands at the very beginning of the biopolitical process of converting people into populations. In the wake of the 2011 Census, Graham Harwood considers its double-edged provision of a technique of control and the manifold potential of an ‘equalising gaze'



This text was commissioned by FACT



It should be no surprise to any of us that the 2011 England and Wales census is being conducted by Lockheed Martin, the same company that we buy trident nuclear missiles, cluster bombs and F-16 fighter jets from. Or that the Scottish Census is being provided by CACI International, a defence contractor who provided the US Army with ‘interrogation services' at Abu Ghraib. After all, the late 19th century's mechanised census tabulation system created by Hollerith (IBM's founder) and Dr. John Shaw Billings not only saved time and reduced errors for the USA Government, but also led to the Nazi's ‘efficient' use of the IBM machines and assisted, through the Dutch census, to reduce the Dutch Jewish population from 140,000 in 1941 to 35,000 in 1945.



To carry out a census you need to have discovered the concept of population, which in Europe seems to have happened sometime during the enlightenment, at the end of the 18th century. Population was accompanied by other nascent technologies of power including electricity, reciprocating engines, pneumatics, bar charts and accurate maps. In 1798, seven years after the French revolution, Thomas Malthus published his essay on the ‘principle of population', suggesting that population growth would soon outstrip supplies of food and Britain would suffer famine, disease and other disasters. Aristocratic gentlemen with land-owning interests could be seen swarming nervously to attend the newly-founded Royal Institution lectures, at 50 guineas a ticket, in an attempt to bend Natural Philosophy into a cheap way to make their land more productive, discipline society and avoid social unrest and the loss of their heads. One of these methods was census of the population.

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