Rebecca Jean Emigh is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. She studies long-term processes of social change, particularly how cultural, economic, and demographic factors intersect to create those processes. With Dylan Riley and Patricia Ahmed, she is the author of Antecedents of Censuses from Medieval to Nation States: How Societies and States Count and Changes in Censuses from Imperialist to Welfare States: How Societies and States Count. Patricia Ahmed is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at South Dakota State University, USA. Her research interests include comparative/historical sociology, cross-cultural sociology, and globalization.Dylan Riley is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He studies capitalism, socialism, democracy, authoritarianism, and knowledge regimes in a broad comparative and historical perspective.