Categories and Contexts: Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical Demography

Throughout its history as a social science, demography has been associated with an exclusively quantitative orientation for studying social problems. As a result, demographers tend to analyse population issues scientifically through sets of fixed social categories that are divorced from dynamic relationships and local contexts and processes. This volume questions these fixed categories in two ways. First, it examines the historical and political circumstances in which such categories had their provenance, and, second, it reassesses their uncritical applications over space and time in a diverse range of empirical case studies, encouraging throughout a constructive interdisciplinary dialogue involving anthropologists, demographers, historians, and sociologists. This volume seeks to examine the political complexities that lie at the heart of population studies by focusing on category formation, category use, and category critique. It shows that this takes the form of a dialectic between the needs for clarity of scientific and administrative analysis and the recalcitrant diversity of the social contexts and human processes that generate population change. The critical reflections of each chapter are enriched by meticulous ethnographic fieldwork and historical research drawn from every continent. This volume, therefore, exemplifies a new methodology for research in population studies, one that does not simply accept and re-use the established categories of population science but seeks critically and reflexively to explore, test, and re-evaluate their meanings in diverse contexts. It shows that for demography to realise its full potential it must urgently re-examine and contextualize the social categories used today in population research. Contributors to this volume - John W. Adams is Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina. Nabesh Bohidar is Researcher with AIMS Research - Bhubaneswar, Orissa Charles L. Briggs is Professor and Director of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University of California, San Diego John Bryant is an analyst in the Policy Coordination and Development Section of the New Zealand Treasury, Wellington Martine Collumbien, formerly at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is a Consultant in Reproductive and Sexual Health Research, 133 Grosvenor Ave., London N5 2NH Braj Das is Researcher with AIMS Research - Bhubaneswar, Orissa Ram Das is Researcher with AIMS Research - Bhubaneswar, Orissa Paula Jean Davis is Assistant professor in the Department of Africana Studies, University of Pittsburgh. A. Dharmalingam is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand Brian Greenberg is the Director of Environmental Social Science at Innovative Resources Management, Washington, DC. Margaret Greene is Research Associate at George Washington University's Center for Global Health, Washington, DC. Susan Greenhalgh is Professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of California at Irvine. Edward Higgs is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, University of Essex Francine Hirsch is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Jennifer S. Hirsch is Assistant Professor, jointly appointed in the Departments of International Health and Anthropology, Emory University. Alice Bee Kasakoff is Professor of Anthropology, University of South Carolina. Philip Kreager is Lecturer in Human Sciences (Demography), Somerville College, Oxford and Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute of Ageing, Oxford University Stephen C. Lubkemann is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at George Washington University and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Research at the Watson Institute for International Studies and in the Portuguese and Brazilian Studies Department at Brown University. Melissa Nobles is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Population at Harvard University and Scientist, World Health Organization Pertti Pelto is Consultant to John Hopkins and Ford Foundation, Maharashtra, India Aree Prohmmo is a Population and Health Consultant, Wellington, New Zealand Elisha P. Renne is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan. Hania Sholkamy is Visiting Scholar in The Institute for Gender and Women's Studies, The American University in Cairo Simon Szreter is Reader in History and Public Policy, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Santiago Villaveces-Izquierdo is Advisor to the Law Reform and Conflict Programs at The Asia Foundation, Indonesia