Brian Silverstein’s book focuses on statistical reform in Turkey and its impact on the Turkish agricultural sector. The reform has been one of the conditions that the Turkish Republic had to fulfill in order for the country to be a candidate for European Union (EU) membership since 1999. As an anthropological work, this study is based on “fieldwork in Turkey with statisticians, farmers and agricultural technicians” so as to examine the role of statistics in how Turkey “learns the things its application to enter the EU has required it to learn about itself” (p. 2). Silverstein argues that the relationship between statistics and agriculture “is thus a performative one” (p. 69). In other words, the changes in statistical methods and their utilization in agriculture “changed” farmers’ lives and practices, rural livelihoods, food production, and, ultimately, patterns of consumption in Turkey (p. 100).
The performative character of statistics, Silverstein argues, is important. This is because, despite their huge impact on society and politics, statistics seem not to have achieved their rightful place in social science research. Many social science studies use statistics merely to demonstrate that the research is of a scientific character. Likewise, statistics are deployed to support the arguments in a large number of scholarly works produced in various disciplines of social sciences. However, most of these studies use statistical data in a descriptive manner, just like photos and/or maps. Therefore, while they make room for statistics on paper, these studies ignore their function in society and politics. Statistics, however, are transformative, and go beyond their utilization as figurative tables.
This is why, perhaps, the introduction of the book, which consists of five chapters, is devoted to answering the question: “What do statistics do?” This is both a rare and strange kind of introduction that one tends not to see in similar works. Imagine a book that begins with an introduction that asks about the importance of text or poem: “What do texts do?” or “What do poems do?” The strangeness of (re)proving what is already known, discovered! However, science picks up where it left off—it is not a subject to be started from the beginning. Scholarship is not about seeking answers to old questions that have already been answered. And this is why I think that such a book should rather start with the following question: “What can statistics not do?” My point here is not that the nature of the introduction to this book is simply about the author’s personal choice; rather, that it is the common and conventional social science research and writing practice that require such a beginning for its practitioners.
In Chapter 2, titled “Knowing the Countryside: Statistics and Society,” Silverstein states that Turkish politicians realized the importance of numbers, in particular, statistics. It was definitely not a coincidence. The multi-party elections in 1983 put an end to the anti-democratic nature of the 1980 military coup and brought the Motherland Party (ANAP) to power. As a liberal party, ANAP gave importance to numbers more than other political parties. There were two reasons: first, because the votes (i.e. numbers) brought them to power; second, its founder Turgut Özal was an engineer and economist. In the words of Tanıl Bora: “he [Özal] always liked to talk through numbers” (Üç Mühendis, Birikim, 15 December 2021). ANAP was also well aware of people’s consciousness regarding the power of numbers. The following anecdote confirms this point very well. One of leading members and deputies of ANAP was reported to have stated: “Citizens behave like they are practically walking calculators” (p. 30). It is thus hardly surprising that ANAP reformed the State Statistical Institute (TurkStat) in the 1990s. In the early 2000s, as a requirement of candidacy for EU membership, it prepared the ground for reforms to be implemented in TurkStat. Once again, the political party that put reform into practice and highlighted the importance of working with numbers was none other than the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which similarly came to power despite “military” opposition. It has, more often than not, been under threat of a military coup. The AKP supported the EU negotiations and thus the “EU integration program” at TurkStat for “transparency, (political) independence, trust-worthiness, quality, and … according to international standards so that they can be compared” (p. 33).
In Chapter 2, Silverstein further argues that: “Statistics are a crucial piece of the assemblage of human and non-human things involved in the large-scale transformation of institutions in Turkey in line with EU norms and standards” (p. 5). For this reason, he examines the role of computers, infrastructure, software, and even internet connectivity. While the “political integration” dimension of the EU-Turkey harmonization process has “stalled,” “infrastructural integration has accelerated and deepened” (p. 12). Moreover, the book touches on the importance of statistics collection systems as well as institutions for agricultural statistics harmonization. In this regard, one can refer to: the Agricultural Production Registration System (TÜKAS), Agricultural Monitoring and Information System (TARBİL), Agricultural Holdings Registration System (TIK), and Farmer Registration System (ÇKS).
One of the outstanding parts of the book is Chapter 3, where the author deals with the issue of statistical compatibility (commensurate) under the title of “Commensuration: Re-Formatting the Political.” EU candidacy for membership requires a new system for the collection of the data needed to produce the “kind of agriculture statistics in specific commensurable formats” (p. 47). Through an examination of the work of technicians and extension workers, Silverstein demonstrates how the combination of “high tech” and “low tech” amounts to new combinations of human and infrastructural apparatuses, and a change in the metrological regime. The commensurate that is also required is that Turkey has to “know certain things about itself, and it must be able to present that knowledge in specific formats (statistics) produced according to certain methodologies” (p. 48). He argues that the institutional commensuration between Turkey and the EU demonstrates the performative character of statistics.
In Chapter 4, titled “Performativity, Economy and the Remaking of Agriculture,” Silverstein examines the impact of statistical reform (reporting requirements and the new integration of databases) on farmers’ practices, aptly called “performative logic” (p. 69). Silverstein calls something performative to emphasize “that an act of description can have effects that rearrange the relationship between the description and the phenomena the description is purportedly about” (p. 10). He emphasizes two main changes: first, the change in attitudes toward reporting and, second, in what farmers plant and where (which fields, for instance). The reforms changed this attitude and had “an effect on farmers’ practices and on the way they think about their work and livelihoods” (p. 70). Turkish farmers were not enthusiastic about giving information on their costs, prices, and income. They started to give information but with the following question in mind: “Is there an advantage to the farmer in under-reporting, over-reporting, or accurately reporting harvests and sale prices?” (p. 87), because they realized that the data they report in one context are being used in another. Farmers have also started realigning their practices as a result of the data they are required to report. The consequence is that there was a “shift from a livelihoods approach to agriculture and subsidies to a market-based agricultural regime” (p. 83).
This important and original study has an important shortcoming. The book makes no mention of classification or taxonomy. Indeed, there is not a single word concerning classification in the book, including the Index. This is a crucial point, mainly because statistics are not just about numbers but also about taxonomy. Moreover, one of the two important pillars of EU-Turkey statistical compatibility is to create both “reliable” numbers and a shared system of classification that would provide a “common language” between the two partners. To illustrate, as a requirement of the integration process, TurkStat has initiated a process of change in classification and has had to adapt the EU classification system. The CPA (Statistical Classification of Products by Activity in the European Economic Community) provides a common EU framework for the comparison of statistical data on products, i.e. goods and services. For example, the NACE (Nomenclature of Economic Activities), which was used to classify products in livestock statistics, was replaced by the CPA in 2007. While the CPA has a hierarchical structure with six levels, of which the fourth level has “502 classes” and the sixth level, “3.142 subcategories”, the NACE has a four-level hierarchy, of which the fourth level has “514 classes”. To give an example, the classifications of the “Turkey’s statistical abstract” for 1994 were different to those for 2015. In terms of selected agricultural products, there were six products in the 1994 classification, and eleven products in the 2015 classification. Only two of the six—chickpeas and lentils—in the first occur in the second.
Although called “static,” collecting, categorizing, and presenting statistical data comprise a profoundly performative and dynamic process that transforms both politics and the society within which it takes place. Social science works on Turkey hardly show any interest in the performative dimension of statistics, as Silverstein’s bibliography demonstrates. For this reason, Silverstein’s book is an original contribution to Turkish Studies and will function as a sound base for future studies that focus on the social and political roles of statistics.
