The Averaged American

The Averaged American turns the history of quantitative social research into a fascinating human story of interviewers probing and cajoling and of citizens who at times were desperate to give information about themselves and who sometimes welcomed, sometimes protested the new statistical characterizations of "normal" American opinions and behavior. -- Theodore M. Porter, author of <i>Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age</i> In her strikingly bold and original The Averaged American, Sarah Igo captures the wonderfully rich and complicated relationships between surveys and those surveyed as she shows how this interaction helped create a mass public. We can see how those surveyed yearned for and understood their roles in the survey process--as well as the creation of expectations of what it meant to live as 'typical' or 'average' respondents/citizens in a mass society. -- Daniel Horowitz, Smith College A brilliant and probing inquiry into one of the subtlest but most significant developments of our time: the cultural construction of a mass society. The Averaged American illuminates the ideological uses of quantitative social research with extraordinary verve and acuity. -- Jackson Lears, editor of <i>Raritan</i> and author of <i>Something for Nothing: Luck in America</i> The Averaged American is an engaging, impressively researched history of the social scientific quest to conjure that ever-elusive "American" public: what "we" think, what "we" believe, how "we" will vote, how "we" behave. Igo shows how, despite their shaky claims to objectivity, inclusiveness, or even accuracy, surveys gradually gained acceptance as a new, more "scientific" way of knowing modern America, with consequences this important and never more relevant book challenges us to confront. -- Alice O'Connor, University of California, Santa Barbara Few scholars of twentieth century America have been able to navigate the complexities associated with simultaneous change in multiple institutions--media, social science, the marketing industry, and community life. Igo does so with tremendous imagination and panache: The Averaged American demonstrates how numbers can transform both the texture of everyday life and the very course of a nation. -- Susan Herbst, Provost, The University at Albany, State University of New York [Igo] investigates how, in our poll-saturated culture, with its insatiable appetite for social facts, our ideas about who we are, what we want, and what we believe are all shaped by and perceived through survey data...Her reflections on the origins, trajectory, and subsequent social impacts of demographic research and its characterization of what constitutes the 'median, average, typical, and normal' are insightful. An important contribution to the early history of the information society and politics of knowledge. -- Theresa Kintz * Library Journal * Briskly written, forcefully argued and broad in scope, The Averaged American falls into a category occupied by works like Paul Starr's Social Transformation of American Medicine and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's Midwife's Tale, Pulitzer Prize-winning books by academics whose reach extended beyond the ivory tower...Igo does for social statistics what Louis Menand's Metaphysical Club did for American pragmatism, providing a narrative intellectual history of the field. -- Scott Stossel * New York Times Book Review * Sharp and surprisingly lively...Ms. Igo patiently documents how surveys came to exercise [its] grip on the American imagination...This is an excellent, thoroughly readable book. -- Brendan Boyle * New York Sun * With all of the data now available on consumers' wants and needs, it's hard to imagine that less than a century ago market research consisted of little more than knowing the number of widgets your busine

Sarah E. Igo is the Andrew Jackson Professor of History and Director of American Studies at Vanderbilt University.

* List of Illustrations * Introduction: America in Aggregate *1. Canvassing a "Typical" Community *2. Middletown Becomes Everytown *3. Polling the Average Populace *4. The Majority Talks Back *5. Surveying Normal Selves *6. The Private Lives of the Public * Epilogue: Statistical Citizens * Notes * Acknowledgments * Index