Lionel Shriver is a writer based in London and New York. Her seventh novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, was published this year. The treatment of population issues in modern fiction is examined under three headings: fear of population decline, fear of population excess, and fear of population professionals. Writings on population decline cover both the depopulation caused by too-low fertility and science-fictional scenarios of natural or human-made demographic catastrophes. Population excess is chiefly portrayed through ecological dystopias, but includes also depictions of unchecked immigration from poor to rich countries. Population professionals as fictional protagonists range from villainous biomedical and social engineers to feckless family planning workers.[29, no. 2 (Jun 03): 153-162]
- Science, Modernity, and the Making of China's One-Child Policy
Susan Greenhalgh, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California at Irvine China's one-child-per-couple policy represents an extraordinary attempt to engineer national wealth, power, and global standing by drastically braking population growth. Despite the policy's external notoriety and internal might, its origins remain obscure. In the absence of scholarly research on this question, public discourse in the United States has been shaped by media representations portraying the policy as the product of a repressive communist regime. This article shows that the core ideas underlying the one-child policy came instead from Western science, in particular from the Club of Rome's world-in-crisis work of the early 1970s. Drawing on research in science studies, the article analyzes the two notions lying at the policy's core—that China faced a virtual "population crisis" and that the one-child policy was "the only solution" to it—as human constructs forged by specific groups of scientists working in particular, highly consequential contexts. It documents how the fundamentally political process of constituting population as an object of science and governance was then depoliticized by scientizing rhetorics that presented China's population crisis and its only solution as numerically describable, objective facts. By probing the human and historical character of population research, this article underscores the complexity of demographic knowledge-making and the power of scientific practices in helping constitute demographic reality itself.[29, no. 2 (Jun 03): 163-196]
- Bridewealth and Birth Control: Low Fertility in the Indonesian Archipelago, 15001900
Peter Boomgaard, Senior Researcher, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden, and Professor of Economic and Environmental History of Southeast Asia, University of Amsterdam Before the onset of the present demographic transition, population growth in Indonesia had reached unprecedentedly high levels. This article demonstrates that such high levels were a recent phenomenon. Prior to 1900 rates of natural population increase were low to very low in most areas in Indonesia. This runs counter to expectations based on Hajnal's "Eastern marriage pattern," which could imply high growth levels in extended family areas, such as most Indonesian regions outside Java in the past. Usually, the low population growth rates in Southeast Asia are attributed to high mortality owing to high levels of violent conflict. It is argued that other factors contributing to such high levels of mortality should receive more attention. In this article it is also argued that low fertility rates, too, played a role in generating low rates of natural increase. The article discusses the influence of marriage patterns, household structure, methods of birth control, adoption, and slavery on fertility.[29, no. 2 (Jun 03): 197-214]
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Cultural and Socioeconomic Influences on Divorce During Modernization: Southeast Asia, 1940s to 1960s
Charles Hirschman, Boeing International Professor, Department of Sociology and Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington Bussarawan Teerawichitchainan, graduate student, Department of Sociology, University of Washington The conventional model of a rising divorce rate during the process of modernization is a staple element of the sociological theory of the family. This generalization is challenged, however, by traditional high-divorce societies, primarily in Islamic Southeast Asia, which have experienced a decline in divorce with modernization. In this study, based on micro-level survey data, the authors explore the social roots of marital disruption in Indonesia and Malaysia and in another Southeast Asian society, Thailand, which has not been identified as a high-divorce society. Comparable survey data from the 1970s (from the World Fertility Survey) allow for an in-depth analysis of traditional patterns of divorce before the rapid modernization of recent decades. Two major findings emerge from the multivariate analysis. First, there is a common pattern across all three societies of higher levels of divorce among "traditional" women—those who live in rural areas, marry at young ages, and have lower levels of education. Second, the authors find significant sociocultural (ethnic, regional, religious) differentials in divorce within each country that cannot be explained by demographic and socioeconomic composition. They present an interpretation of how moderately high levels of divorce were accommodated in traditional Southeast Asian societies.[29, no. 2 (Jun 03): 215-253]
Notes and Commentary - The Benefits from Marriage and Religion in the United States: A Comparative Analysis
Linda J. Waite, Lucy Flower Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago
Evelyn L. Lehrer, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago In the United States, married people have better outcomes on a variety of measures of well-being than do single persons. People who participate in religious activities show similar advantages relative to those who have no religious involvement. This article presents a comparative analysis of these two social institutions: marriage and religion. A critical review of the literature on how religious involvement and being married affect a range of child and adult outcomes provides evidence of generally positive effects. Religion and marriage have an impact on many of the same domains of life, and there are remarkable similarities in the mechanisms through which they exert an influence.[29, no. 2 (Jun 03): 255-275]
Data and Perspectives - Toward a New Conceptualization of Settlements for Demography
Graeme Hugo, Professor of Geography, Department of Geographical and Environmental Studies, and Director, National Centre for Social Applications of GIS, University of Adelaide, South Australia
Anthony Champion, Professor of Population Geography, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
Alfredo Lattes, former president, Centro de Estudios de Población (CENEP), Buenos Aires, Argentina It has long been recognized that where people live and work can be a relevant factor in helping to explain demographic behavior, yet the treatment of location in censuses and surveys remains surprisingly crude. Emphasis is still being given to the urban–rural dichotomy based on definitions that most countries around the world introduced 40 to 50 years ago and have modified little since. Given the increase in the complexity of settlement systems in recent decades in less developed as well as in more developed contexts, this simple classification is no longer adequate for examining the role of settlement in demographic processes. The time has come to rethink how settlement should be differentiated in population data collection and analysis. Contemporary technologies and methodologies make it possible to analyze spatially referenced data in ways that are more rapid and sophisticated than could have been imagined when the conventional approach was devised.[29, no. 2 (Jun 03): 277-297]
Archives - Charles Henry Pearson on the Decline of the Family
Book Reviews- Two-and-a-Half Cheers: A Review Essay on the International Migration Report 2002, reviewed by David A. Coleman
- Amy Chua, World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, reviewed by Michael Teitelbaum
- Surjit S. Bhalla, Imagine There's No Country: Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in the Era of Globalization, reviewed by Geoffrey McNicoll
- John Firor and Judith Jacobsen, The Crowded Greenhouse: Population, Climate Change, and Creating a Sustainable World, reviewed by Frederick A. B. Meyerson
- Joel Perlmann and Mary C. Waters (eds.), The New Race Question: How the Census Counts Multiracial Individuals, reviewed by Donald J. Hernandez
Short Reviews - Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll (eds.), Encyclopedia of Population
- Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.), Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Agriculture: Towards 2015/2030: An FAO Perspective and Summary Report
- Jeanne X. Kasperson and Roger E. Kasperson, Global Environmental Risk
- Richard Lynn, Eugenics: A Reassessment
- Douglas W. Maynard, Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra, Nora Cate Schaeffer, and Johannes van der Zouwen (eds.), Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview
- Anthony M. Messina (ed.), West European Immigration and Immigrant Policy in the New Century
Documents - The United Nations on Levels and Trends of International Migration and Related Policies
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