| dc.description.abstract | This essay concerns equality statistics as part of a population census. It is a kind of
statistics that is not in action in Sweden because of data protection law for sensitive
data (Personuppgiftslagen). This kind of an enlarged census is requested from
international institutions like the UN and the EU as a tool to combat discrimination
and to keep track of human rights. In Sweden there is a prohibition against collecting
sensitive data regarding for instance sexuality, disability, transgender, ethnic
background and national minority.
The essay examines arguments from minority groups in Sweden, who participated in
an enquiry done by the Equality Ombudsman on a government assignment 2011. The
enquiry process was done during 2012 and resulted in the report Statistikens roll i
arbetet mot diskriminering (The Role of Statistics in Combating Discrimination).
The starting point of the essay is to look at equality statistics with a two folded
potential: as liberating or oppressive for the counted. It could be a liberating tool as the
gender categories, which serves as an example of that in the essay. It could also be a
tool for oppression and to exemplify the essay use eugenics and the Swedish Race
Biological Institute in the early 1900 th century.
The arguments pro and con equality statistics are abstracted and sorted in 7 themes:
Equality as principle, Participation, Visibility, Strengthening of characteristics and
identity, Anonymity and Internal and external power hierarchies. Some of the pro
arguments were about visibility and to be counted, while some of the con arguments
refereed to historical events like the Holocaust and registration of minorities in order
to limit their being in Sweden.
From a science studies point of view the essay discuss different approaches for
analyzing the thematic arguments. One classic approach is the popperian critical view
of historicism; some of the arguments could be labelled historicist, and therefore
invalid and irrelevant according to Karl Popper. Another approach is post colonial; the
arguments comes from groups that are traditionally out defined from science and their
knowledge could be seen as the knowledge from “the Other”.
In the final section the arguments are related to two aspects of legitimacy. There is the
aspect of the state legitimacy towards the citizens by trying to correct injustice and
inequality. The other concerns recognition of minorities by including them in the
population census, and by that strengthens their status as citizens in the national state.
Also the essay tries to place equality statistics in a classical context of modernity and
in the context of nation building. | sv |
