The article analyzes the variations on the statistical discourse generated by the Diretoria Geral de Estatística from the crisis of the Empire until the 1930 Revolution. It argues that the changes in the concept of population, involved in the nationalist movement in the 1910’s and 1920’s, brought new possibilities for an inferential use of official data, giving statistics a more normative dimension. Relying on sources like general census, statistical yearbooks, commemorative works, and articles from the press, the author seeks to map the shifts in the way demographic data were encoded and presented, especially in what comes to education, health and occupational structure, which configure the notion of social sphere as upheld at the time. On the ground of the historiography of statistics and of the Foucault’s contributions on governmentality, the article draws attention to the genealogical approach on population in general, and particularly to the importance of the social studies of statistics for the renewal of our understanding of the Early Republic.
State Building; The National Question; Historical Sociology of Statistics
