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The Social Survey in Global Perspective, 1900-2020s
Edited by Charlotte Greenhalgh, Clare Corbould and Warwick Anderson
Foreword by Mike Savage
302 pages, 3 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-83695-403-3 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (March 2026)
eISBN 978-1-83695-404-0 eBook Not Yet Published
Reviews
“An immensely readable and interesting discussion of the history of social surveys across the globe, with different questions and populations in mind. The editors have done an excellent job selecting Contributors who speak to surveys in different contexts with skill.” • Prof. Matt Dawson, University of Glasgow
Description
The Social Survey in Global Perspective traces the evolution of social surveys beyond celebrated metropolitan examples, exploring their worldwide impact across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Contributors examine surveys in diverse contexts—from colonial territories to grassroots women’s organizations—to reveal methodological challenges and profound social influence. The collection illuminates how surveys shaped state power, social movements, and individual identity while often reproducing existing hierarchies. By exploring the double-sided legacy of social surveying—as an engine of both progressive reform and state surveillance—this book offers a critical reassessment of empirical practices that continue to determine how we understand ourselves, our societies and our world.
Charlotte Greenhalgh is Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the History Program at the University of Waikato. Her project on the history of pregnancy in twentieth-century New Zealand has been supported by a Royal Society of New Zealand research grant. She is also working on collaborative projects on the international histories of social surveys, hormonal pregnancy tests, and perinatal medicine. Charlotte is the author of Aging in Twentieth-century Britain (University of California Press, 2018).
Clare Corbould is Associate Professor and Associate Head (Research) of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her publications include Becoming African Americans (Harvard University Press, 2009); a co-edited volume, Remembering the Revolution (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013); and many articles and chapters about African American intellectual and cultural life in the twentieth century. More recently, she has co-authored work on the Australian legacies of Atlantic slavery. Her next book, written with Michael McDonnell at the University of Sydney, traverses African Americans’ ideas about their nation’s founding ideals of freedom and democracy, from 1776 to today.
Warwick Anderson is Janet Dora Hine Professor of Politics, Governance and Ethics in the Discipline of Anthropology and the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney. A co-conspirator in postcolonial studies of science, he has written extensively on science, race and colonialism; medicine and white masculinity; kuru, cannibalism and sorcerer scientists; and autoimmunity and tolerance of self. His current research is focused on disease ecology and planetary health. In 2023, he was awarded the John Desmond Bernal Prize of the Society for Social Studies of Science. His recent publications include Spectacles of Waste (Polity 2024) and Medicine on a Larger Scale, co-edited with Anne Kveim Lie and Jeremy A. Greene (CUP 2025).
Subject: History: 20th Century to PresentSociology
Contents
Of Related Interest
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Colin Mackenzie, the Early Colonial State, and the Comprehensive Survey of India
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Precarious Methods and Life in a Workers' Hostel
