Goldsmiths - University of London

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Dr Emmanuel Didier

Chargé de Recherche, CNRS-EHESS

Research Fellow

http://gspm.ehess.fr/document.php?id=625

 

Research Interests

Emmanuel Didier is a permanent researcher in sociology at the Institut Marcel Mauss, CNRS-EHESS and he teaches History of statistics at the ENSAE (Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique) and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.

Originally trained as a statistician, Emmanuel Didier has produced some statistical results, especially in the field of victimization surveys. But he specializes in the study of statistics as a tool of government. His first book (acclaimed by Le Monde) bore on the relationship between the invention of random sampling in the US and the political innovations of the New Deal which are State interventionism and State planning. Focusing on the history of policies concerning agriculture on the one hand and labor on the other, he proposed a theory of social consistency and social solidity of politics and knowledge.

He is now finishing a project entitled Benchmarking (financially supported by French ANR), in which he studied the latest transformations of management by numbers in the French public administration. He focuses principally on government of the police of public security, and also on government of research and of health. The goal of this project is to understand how management by number, imported in government from private companies, changed the meaning and practice of the French State.

He is now preparing a new project entitled “Statactivism”, dedicated to gather and analyze ways in which ordinary people resist to or pervert quantitative management tools, or use statistics to enhance their power against institutions.  He focuses on nowadays fight of French precarious intellectual workers (“intellectuels précaires”) to gain recognition and economical advantages.

 

Recent Publications

Didier, Emmanuel. 2011 L’Etat néo-libéral ment-il ? “Chanstique” et statistiques de police. Terrain, 57, pp. 66-81.

Didier, Emmanuel. 2011 Counting on Relief: Industrializing the Statistical Interviewer during the New Deal. Science in Context, 24(2), pp. 281-310.

Didier, Emmanuel. 2011. “Compstat” à Paris : initiative et mise en responsabilité policière. Champ pénal/Penal field, nouvelle revue internationale de criminologie, Vol. VIII.

Didier, Emmanuel. 2010 “Gabriel Tarde and Statistical Mouvement”, in Candea M. (Ed.) The Social After Gabriel Tarde, Routledge, London, 163-176

Didier, Emmanuel. 2010. The victim’s decision to report offences to the police in France. Stating losses or expressing attitudes. Philippe Robert, Renée Zauberman, Lisa Miceli, Sophie Névanen, International Review of Victimology, Vol. 17, pp. 179–206.

Didier, Emmanuel. 2009 La solidité des institutions. Les statistiques de « victimation » de l’Insee (1996-2006). S. Nevanen, Ph. Robert and R. Zauberman, Genèses, 1(74), pp. 128-144.

Didier, Emmanuel. 2009. L’acteur et la mesure. Le comptage de la délinquance entre données administratives et enquêtes. R. Zauberman, Ph. Robert, and S. Nevanen, Revue française de sociologie, 50(1), pp. 31- 62.

Didier, Emmanuel. 2008. L’évolution de la délinquance d’après enquêtes de victimation. France, 1984-2005. Ph. Robert, R. Zauberman, S. Névanen, Déviance et Société, Vol. 32(4), pp. 435-471.