5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The UN slogan “Better Data, Better Lives” has become even more salient since the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development relies on population and housing censuses to develop many of the indicators operationalizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While indicators are often seen as instruments for gathering objective information, they can also be conceptualized as instruments that constitute their objects in a particular way and are, hence, interventions that might induce epistemic change in their use context. Since population statistics have existed for around two centuries, they have largely become taken for granted. Consequentially, they are hardly questioned any more. What are the purposes and meanings that they become associated with in processes of public policy?

While the knowledge-use literature originally asked to which extent research results are used in public policy, the assumption of instrumental knowledge use was later reformulated, emphasizing the epistemic changes in policymaking that were attributable to the diffusion of academic concepts through the media. On the “detour” of the media, academic concepts are trivialized, become partially taken for granted, and are partially imbued with new meanings. Applying this idea to population indicators, the planned session strives to bring together contributions on the use of population indicators in public policy. In which policy fields are population indicators most relevant? What do they stand for in political and administrative practice? To which extent have administrative practices changed through the use of population indicators? How contested are population indicators compared to other indicators and non-quantified forms of knowing?