• Kate Evans
• Rear Vision, ABC Radio National

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04 August 2011Next week Australia holds its census, and so Rear Vision traces the recent history of this ancient institution, to make sense of who counts, and who does the counting.

While there have been systems of "enumeration" in place since the Romans, Egyptians and Chinese wanted to keep track of populations and landowners, fighting forces and minorities - the Australian system owes its origins to both English naval "musters" and colonial forms of control, and international statistical developments.

So today on Rear Vision we compare the Australian census with the British census of the nineteenth century, and the census in the USA - mandated in the constitution and posited as central to nation-building and politics.

Guests

Beth Wright
Historian of the Australian Census, undertaking a PhD at the Australian National University on the subject. Worked for the Australian Bureau of Statistics for many years.

Edward Higgs
Historian of the British Census. Professor of History, University of Essex.

Margo Anderson
Historian of the US Census. Prof of History and Urban Studies, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee