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.

Snacka om observatörseffekt. På samma sätt torde vi göteborgska statsvetare, efter femtio år av valundersökningar och tjugo år av Som-dito, ha gett ett avgörande bidrag för att disciplinera svensken till att förstå sig själv som en samhällsvetenskaplig analysenhet.

Ah, hemska tanke: Homo holmbergiensis blir ett Frankensteins monster som vänder sig mot sin skapare…