Statistics can tell us virtually nothing about the currents in this sea theoretically governed by the institutional frameworks that it in fact gradually erodes and displaces. Indeed, it is less a matter of a liquid circulating in the interstices of a solid than of different movements making use of the elements of the terrain. Statistical study is satisfied with classifying, calculating and tabulating these elements-"lexical" units, advertising words, television images, manufactured products, constructed places, etc.-and they do it with categories and taxonomies that conform to those of industrial or administrative production. Hence such study can grasp only the material used by consumer practices-a material which is obviously that imposed on everyone by production-and not the formality proper to these practices, their surreptitious and guileful "movement," that is, the very activity of "making do." The strength of these computations lies in their ability to divide, but this analytical ability eliminates the possibility of representing the tactical trajectories which, according to their own criteria, select fragments taken from the vast ensembles of production in order to compose new stories with them.
What is counted is what is used, not the ways of using.
What is counted is what is used, not the ways of using.
Michel de Certeau
The Practice of Everyday Life (1980)
trade-balance time-series chart
William Playfair
Commercial and Political Atlas (1786)