Fertility, Conjuncture, Difference

Anthropological Approaches to the Heterogeneity of Modern Fertility Declines

By: Astrid Bochow (Editor), Philip Kreager (Editor)

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eBook | 15 September 2017 | Edition Number 1

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In the last forty years anthropologists have made major contributions to understanding the heterogeneity of reproductive trends and processes underlying them. Fertility transition, rather than the story of the triumphant spread of Western birth control rationality, reveals a diversity of reproductive means and ends continuing before, during, and after transition. This collection brings together anthropological case studies, placing them in a comparative framework of compositional demography and conjunctural action. The volume addresses major issues of inequality and distribution which shape population and social structures, and in which fertility trends and the formation and size of families are not decided solely or primarily by reproduction.

Industry Reviews

"Philip Kreager and Astrid Bochow's edited Fertility, conjuncture, difference is a convincing continuation of critical discussions which began in the mid-1990s about, on the one hand, using anthropological approaches in order to understand the heterogeneity of modern reproductive change and, on the other, the possibilities for creating an anthropological demography. This effort is tackled in the volume's extraordinary introduction, in which the editors outline the innovative research strategy - combining conjunctural action and compositional difference - needed to unravel the continuing diversity of fertility world-wide." ? Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)

"This volume offers much needed empirical support to the concept of vital conjunctures, but it also provides a more theoretical discussion explaining the reproductive decision-making beyond the mere economic rationality of the actors. The fact that demographic explanations should pay closer attention to the compositional effects, achieved through the individual agency within the "multiple potential futures" stands as the biggest strength of the book." ? Anthropological Notebooks

"Outstanding. This volume follows in a distinct lineage of both historically and anthropologically-informed critical studies of the demographic analysis of fertility decline and reproductive change. It is an excellent addition to that corpus of work." ? Simon Szreter, St John's College, Cambridge