Observing Agriculture in Early Twentieth-Century Italy

Datafication, Power and Control in Development: A Historical Perspective on the Perils and Longevity of Data

“…Datafication is not simply a technological novelty: it is also the result of particular and hierarchical social interactions. Our analysis of the beneficiaries of and contributors to the datafication processes has stressed the negotiated and participatory nature of data, in line with the recent literature on quantification and statistics (D’Onofrio, 2016), challenging top-down interpretations of quantification. As we have shown, the Latin American colonial empire worked with data provided by local informants, the survey of Ireland proceeded with the help of locally recruited surveyors, the mortality data in London were collected by local searchers, and the mapping and government of India relied on the extensive expertise and archives of local states.…”

“…Second, by framing current and past cases of datafication as a deliberate political project of development, we call into question the conventional, top-down understanding of governmental surveillance that has proliferated since the seminal writings of Scott (1998, see also Merry et al, 2015). We examine how colonial and post-colonial subjects, often under conditions of constraint, have also contributed to the co-construction of practices of data collection and data processing (Brendecke, 2016; D’Onofrio, 2016). Our cases demonstrate that even bottom-up processes can be harnessed for the purposes of extractive political and economic control.…”

Accounting, educational institutions and local government in Italy (1886–1907)

“… 11. Giovanni Bonsignori, director of the Colonia, was elected provincial deputy in 1899. He committed himself to the birth and spread of the itinerant chairs of agriculture, a model of dissemination of the best agricultural techniques (by imitating the model throughout Italy) at the beginning of the twentieth century (D’Onofrio, 2016; VvAa, 1998: 33–35). For this reason, following a visit by a special commission on 4 July 1902, the Consiglio Superiore di Agricoltura awarded the diploma of honour and the gold medal to the Colonia in Remedello, which acknowledged the contribution made to agricultural progress. …”