Editorial. Consumption and living conditions: Papers and figures

Several inventories of research, produced by the US Department of Agriculture in 1935 and by the French Centre de recherche et de documentation sur la consommation (Credoc) in 1964, list a large number of surveys on consumption and living conditions. This wide range of surveys as perceived by the survey interviewers, is the starting point for this issue. After providing an overview of existing research on the topic, this editorial shows that this special issue will make a contribution to several historiographies: the history of consumption, the fight against poverty, welfare states, and the history of statistics, sociology and religion. This issue provides information on the various periods in the history of social surveys in the 20th century, and looks at a variety of contexts – France, Japan, colonial and post-colonial Morocco, Poland, Switzerland and the USSR. It also looks at the interviewers and what the surveys produced in terms of quantitative data. Finally, the issue looks at the different ways that interviewers, methods and data circulated.