HNY Community Conversations: Data & Democracy with Dan Bouk

Humanities New York continues its Online Community Conversations series in October with this hour-long conversation about how our current data-driven society has historical precedent in the data of the census records.

When we hear the word “data,” we may think about today’s tech giants: the companies who gather information as they deliver goods to our doors or present personalized ads on our timelines. But data has been with us for hundreds of years; the gathering of data has been central to democratic governance since the dawning of the American nation-state. In this session, Dan Bouk, author of Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them, will discuss the U.S. census and how it represents us and our communities. Participants are invited to dig into historical census records and consider this crucial national infrastructure in new ways. This conversation can be used as a model for others to host discussions that empower participants to sift through data and think critically about how it’s used.