Counting Populations, Understanding Societies

Counting Populations, Understanding Societies PDF Author: Véronique Petit
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400750463
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
The core aim of this book is to determine how anthropology and demography can be used in conjunction in the field of population and development. The boundaries of demography are not as clearly defined or as stable as one might think, especially in view of the tension between a formal demography centered on the ‘core of procedures and references’ and a more open form of demography, generally referred to as Population Studies. Many rapprochements, missed opportunities and isolated attempts marked the disciplinary history of anthropology and demography, both disciplines being founded on distinct and highly differentiated traditions and practices. Moreover, the role and the place assigned to epistemology differ significantly in ethnology and demography. Yet, anthropology and demography provide complementary models and research instruments and this book shows that neither discipline can afford to overlook their respective contributions. Based on research conducted in West Africa over more than twenty years, it is a defense of field demography that makes case for a continuum ranging from the initial conception of fieldwork and research to its effective implementation and to data analysis. Changes in behaviors relating to fertility, poverty or migration cannot be interpreted without invoking the cultural factor at some stage. Representations in their collective and individual dimensions also fit into the extended explanatory space of demography.

Counting Populations, Understanding Societies

Counting Populations, Understanding Societies PDF Author: Véronique Petit
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400750463
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book Here

Book Description
The core aim of this book is to determine how anthropology and demography can be used in conjunction in the field of population and development. The boundaries of demography are not as clearly defined or as stable as one might think, especially in view of the tension between a formal demography centered on the ‘core of procedures and references’ and a more open form of demography, generally referred to as Population Studies. Many rapprochements, missed opportunities and isolated attempts marked the disciplinary history of anthropology and demography, both disciplines being founded on distinct and highly differentiated traditions and practices. Moreover, the role and the place assigned to epistemology differ significantly in ethnology and demography. Yet, anthropology and demography provide complementary models and research instruments and this book shows that neither discipline can afford to overlook their respective contributions. Based on research conducted in West Africa over more than twenty years, it is a defense of field demography that makes case for a continuum ranging from the initial conception of fieldwork and research to its effective implementation and to data analysis. Changes in behaviors relating to fertility, poverty or migration cannot be interpreted without invoking the cultural factor at some stage. Representations in their collective and individual dimensions also fit into the extended explanatory space of demography.

Handbook on Theories of Governance

Handbook on Theories of Governance PDF Author: Ansell, Christopher
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1800371977
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
The thoroughly revised and updated Handbook on Theories of Governance brings together leading scholars in the field to summarise and assess the diversity of governance theories. The Handbook advances a deeper theoretical understanding of governance processes, illuminating the interdisciplinary foundations of the field.

Population, Family and Society in Pre-Modern Japan

Population, Family and Society in Pre-Modern Japan PDF Author: Akira Hayami
Publisher: Global Oriental
ISBN: 9004212930
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Doyen of demography studies in Japan at the University of Tokyo, this collection of Akira Hayami’s writings in English brings together for the first time an invaluable resource of comparative primary data on the demographic history of Japan. Containing twenty key essays, the volume is divided into five parts: Tokugawa Japan, Demography through Telescope, Demography through Microscope, Family and Household, Afterwards. It begins with Philip II of Spain and Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the sixteenth century and concludes with Koji Sugi and the emergence of modern population studies in the twentieth century.

Counting Bodies

Counting Bodies PDF Author: Molly Farrell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190277327
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Quantifiable citizenship in the form of birth certificates, census forms, and immigration quotas is so ubiquitous that today it appears ahistorical. Yet before the modern colonial era, there was neither a word for "population" in the sense of numbers of people, nor agreement that monarchs should count their subjects. Much of the work of naturalizing the view that people can be represented as populations took place far outside government institutions and philosophical treatises. It occurred instead in the work of colonial writers who found in the act of counting a way to imagine fixed boundaries between intermingling groups. Counting Bodies explores the imaginative, personal, and narrative writings that performed the cultural work of normalizing the enumeration of bodies. By repositioning and unearthing a literary pre-history of population science, the book shows that representing individuals as numbers was a central element of colonial projects. Early colonial writings that describe routine and even intimate interactions offer a window into the way people wove the quantifiable forms of subjectivity made available by population counts into everyday life. Whether trying to make sense of plantation slavery, frontier warfare, rapid migration, or global commerce, writers framed questions about human relationships across different cultures and generations in terms of population.

Human Evolutionary Demography

Human Evolutionary Demography PDF Author: Oskar Burger
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1800641737
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 572

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Book Description
Human evolutionary demography is an emerging field blending natural science with social science. This edited volume provides a much-needed, interdisciplinary introduction to the field and highlights cutting-edge research for interested readers and researchers in demography, the evolutionary behavioural sciences, biology, and related disciplines. By bridging the boundaries between social and biological sciences, the volume stresses the importance of a unified understanding of both in order to grasp past and current demographic patterns. Demographic traits, and traits related to demographic outcomes, including fertility and mortality rates, marriage, parental care, menopause, and cooperative behavior are subject to evolutionary processes. Bringing an understanding of evolution into demography therefore incorporates valuable insights into this field; just as knowledge of demography is key to understanding evolutionary processes. By asking questions about old patterns from a new perspective, the volume—composed of contributions from established and early-career academics—demonstrates that a combination of social science research and evolutionary theory offers holistic understandings and approaches that benefit both fields. Human Evolutionary Demography introduces an emerging field in an accessible style. It is suitable for graduate courses in demography, as well as upper-level undergraduates. Its range of research is sure to be of interest to academics working on demographic topics (anthropologists, sociologists, demographers), natural scientists working on evolutionary processes, and disciplines which cross-cut natural and social science, such as evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, cultural evolution, and evolutionary medicine. As an accessible introduction, it should interest readers whether or not they are currently familiar with human evolutionary demography.

An Epidemic of Uncertainty

An Epidemic of Uncertainty PDF Author: Jenny Trinitapoli
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226825701
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
A decade-long study of young adulthood in Malawi that demonstrates the impact of widespread HIV status uncertainty, laying bare the sociological implications of what is not known. An Epidemic of Uncertainty advances a new framework for studying social life by emphasizing something social scientists routinely omit from their theories, models, and measures–what people know they don’t know. Taking Malawi’s ongoing AIDS epidemic as an entry point, Jenny Trinitapoli shows that despite admirable declines in new HIV infections and AIDS-related mortality, an epidemic of uncertainty persists; at any given point in time, fully half of Malawian young adults don’t know their HIV status. Reckoning with the impact of this uncertainty within the bustling trading town of Balaka, Trinitapoli argues that HIV-related uncertainty is measurable, pervasive, and impervious to biomedical solutions, with consequences that expand into multiple domains of life, including relationship stability, fertility, and health. Over the duration of a groundbreaking decade-long longitudinal study, rich survey data and poignant ethnographic vignettes vividly depict how individual lives and population patterns unfold against the backdrop of an ever-evolving epidemic. Even as HIV is transformed from a progressive, fatal disease to a chronic and manageable condition, the accompanying epidemic of uncertainty remains fundamental to understanding social life in this part of the world. Insisting that known unknowns can and should be integrated into social-scientific models of human behavior, An Epidemic of Uncertainty treats uncertainty as an enduring aspect, a central feature, and a powerful force in everyday life.

The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies

The Growth and Collapse of Pacific Island Societies PDF Author: Patrick Vinton Kirch
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082486476X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Were there major population collapses on Pacific Islands following first contact with the West? If so, what were the actual population numbers for islands such as Hawai‘i, Tahiti, or New Caledonia? Is it possible to develop new methods for tracking the long-term histories of island populations? These and related questions are at the heart of this new book, which draws together cutting-edge research by archaeologists, ethnographers, and demographers. In their accounts of exploration, early European voyagers in the Pacific frequently described the teeming populations they encountered on island after island. Yet missionary censuses and later nineteenth-century records often indicate much smaller populations on Pacific Islands, leading many scholars to debunk the explorers’ figures as romantic exaggerations. Recently, the debate over the indigenous populations of the Pacific has intensified, and this book addresses the problem from new perspectives. Rather than rehash old data and arguments about the validity of explorers’ or missionaries’ accounts, the contributors to this volume offer a series of case studies grounded in new empirical data derived from original archaeological fieldwork and from archival historical research. Case studies are presented for the Hawaiian Islands, Mo‘orea, the Marquesas, Tonga, Samoa, the Tokelau Islands, New Caledonia, Aneityum (Vanuatu), and Kosrae.

Population and Society

Population and Society PDF Author: Clare Holdsworth
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 144627554X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
"An excellent introduction to the study of population and its significance for many of the key social, political, cultural and environmental issues facing the world today. It covers population growth, ageing, migration and mobility, parenting, health inequalities, and much more... The authors do not shy away from areas of continuing debate, providing both sides of an argument and encouraging readers to follow up the original sources" - Tony Champion, Emeritus Professor of Population Geography, Centre for Urban, Regional & Development Studies, Newcastle University and Vice President, British Society for Population Studies, 2011-2013 Population and Society is an undergraduate introduction to population that explains the latest trends in population studies. The text provides a detailed and completely accessible overview that: situates demographic events - fertility, mortality and migration - within the context of broader social impacts and theorisations like social inequalities, individualisation and life course analysis uses global illustrative examples to demonstrate the importance of data and data interpretation in population studies is illustrated throughout with pedagogic features, like chapter opening summaries, suggestions for further readings and case study examples. This text will be widely used as the standard and most up-to-date text on population and society for courses across the social sciences.

Understanding Society and Knowledge

Understanding Society and Knowledge PDF Author: Nico Stehr
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1802203796
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Understanding Society and Knowledge proposes that knowledge rather than nature, violence, or power provides the basis of and the driving force behind human action in modern society. It demonstrates how the legally enforced restricted use of knowledge enables the transformation of the knowledge society into knowledge capitalism.

Population Studies and Development from Theory to Fieldwork

Population Studies and Development from Theory to Fieldwork PDF Author: Véronique Petit
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319617745
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
This book addresses major population and development issues: fertility and reproductive health, migrations, gender, education, poverty and inequalities. To that aim it revisits and considerably enlarges Kingsley Davis’ 1963 theory of change and response, using interdisciplinary methodologies. On the basis of four decades of field research (1985-2015), it questions the rationality of the actors, how culture shapes socio-demographic behaviours, in a context of modernity and globalisation. More specifically, it casts new light on the interactions of individuals, families, networks and local communities with the State and its population policy.