Dark Territory in the Information Age: Learning from the West German Census Controversies of the 1980s

This book is the culmination of a ten-year research project funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany). It is ground-breaking in two senses. First, it demonstrates in great empirical detail that coordinated 'resistance' against the kinds of power relations analysed by Michel Foucault is inherently territorial. The question of what sort of politics a Foucauldian perspective licenses has remained one of the nagging issues among political geographers and other social scientists. Secondly, the book distils from the West German census boycotts of the 1980s a rough outline for how statistical information gathering by large organizations can become the setting for a proactive, grassroots politics of representation. It thus makes intelligible a range of seemingly unconnected recent political movements aimed at statistics of various sorts. Both of these general purposes of the book are carried out without much abstract philosophical or geographic theory, thus rendering it accessible to a wide range of scholars and interested public. The book received the 2011 Julian Minghi Outstanding Research Award from the Political Geography Specialty Group of the AAG.