Debating the categories of remote indigenous sociality

In The Use of Official Statistics in Sociology (1973), Barry Hindess distinguished between two critical approaches to official statistics: technical and theoretical. In this article I will elucidate Barry’s distinction and then apply it to a recent body of research by social scientists at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Research. In Making Sense of the Census (2002) and Agency, Contingency and the Census Process (2007), the CAEPR authors give a critical account of the enumeration of remote-living Indigenous Australians. I will offer a reading of these two publications that is faithful to Barry’s distinction between “technical” and “theoretical” critique.