International Studies in Demography - Böcker

In both developed and developing countries, the elderly have enjoyed significant declines in mortality and increased survival. At the same time, these trends have also given rise to many uncertainties and demands on resources which are often not given their due attention. Future mortality declines, particularly among the elderly, are often overshadowed by fears of their increasing share of the total population and the demands that this places on society to resolve the problems stemming from longer survival - problems, for example, which are not just a question of guaranteeing longer life but also of ensuring an acceptable health status. In recent years, there has been a substantial literature on many facets of the daily lives of the elderly. This volume is a further contribution to the literature, pinpointing the most recent trends in the survival of the elderly and in their physical and mental health. It also describes possible scenarios for the early decades of the twenty-first century. To delineate current knowledge with regard to the health and survival of the elderly is a first step towards preparing projections and improving the efficacy of health policies for the elderly. The first section of this volume is dedicated to a discussion about the age at which people become `elderly' and to the application of evolutionary theory to demographic models of human mortality. The second section looks in more detail at different aspects of morbidity and mortality trends and their underlying causes. The third section deals with mortality projections, ranging from the hypotheses to problems of methodology. The fourth section covers social and health strategies to improve the survival and quality of life of the elderly, in view of the fact that more and more people may expect to live longer and longer, and perhaps in increasingly better health.

This book examines the remarkable decline of mortality in Europe which began in the nineteenth century and continued in an uninterrupted fashion, into the early twentieth century.The transition of mortality between 1870 and 1920 had profound effects for European and American societies. Interpretations explaining such changes have become a hotbed of controversy. Some scholars stress the importance of improved nutrition, levels of income, and living standards as the crucial factors. Others consider public health, social organization, and scientific advances to be more significant. This volume brings to light the different positions held on these various issues, describes advances made in the field, and indicates directions for future research.

This volume surveys the state of knowledge and research on the determinants of human reproduction. It adopts an inter-disciplinary approach and integrates information from demographic, epidemiological and biological studies of fertility.The chapters provide a comprehensive overview of reproductive processes, including puberty and menopause, conception and fetal loss, and the effects of sexually transmitted diseases and lactation. The volume also considers the effects on fertility of nutrition and stress, environmental and occupational hazards, and social behaviour, and includes clinical papers on fertility following contraceptive use and treatment of infertility. Findings from original research on the determinants of human reproduction are also presented.

Event history analysis - the study of individual life histories - has developed rapidly over the past few years. This book illustrates the use of the new techniques at the frontier of the subject. The number of surveys undertaken throughout the world to collect detailed information on the timing of events in individual lives (eg fertility surveys, migration histories) have increased, and new methods to analyse such data have developed. Unresolved technical and practical issues remain, and researchers have limited experience of the new techniques - this volume addresses these issues and provides information on the new methodologies.The book covers three main areas. First, it summarizes the work on the incorporation of unmeasured heterogeneity into the analysis of event histories; secondly, it introduces a series of 'competitions' in which pairs of teams are assigned to analyse the same topic using the same data; finally, it discusses other methodological issues such as the treatment of missing data, the analysis of current-status data, and the relation between discrete and continuous time models.

Using a mixture of economic and demographic analysis, this book studies the changing patterns of family formation over the last twenty years. A strength of the book is the data and analysis included on Japan and Western countries, which have previously been less researched than the developing world.The first part explores the effects of economic considerations on family formation. Topics covered include the correlation between levels of cohabitation and personal economic resources and modelling the changes in optimal timing of childbearing in Britain, using the earnings profile of the mothers.The second part deals explicitly with the impact of demographic patterns on economic behaviour, and especially with the distribution of economic resources as a smaller working population supports a growing population of the elderly. The data used is from Sweden, Japan, and France, and the economic models used find that lower consumption and greater inequality is the likely implication for the future.

There are strongly pronounced differentials between survival chances for different social classes in less developed countries. This book gives insight into the variety of factors–biological, social, economic and cultural–associated with these inequalities in mortality rates. Certain of the papers deal with new conceptual approaches and methodological issues, while others cover particular countries in Asia and Latin America, providing overall an important and provoking study of inequality in death.Contributors: L. Ruzicka, J. Duchene, G. Wunsch, R. H. Gray, S. Horiuchi, S. D'Souza, E. E. Arriaga, J. M. Guzman, B. Utomo, M. B. Iskandar, N. H. Fisek, A. Palloni, G. C. Myers, A. Bouckaert, P. Kane

This volume focuses on the relationship between change in the family and change in the roles of women and men on contemporary industrial societies. Of central concern is whether change in gender roles has fuelled - or is merely historically coincident with - such changes in the family as rising divorce rates, increases in out-of-wedlock childbearing, declining marriage rates, and a growing disconnection between the lives of men and children. Covering more that twenty countries, including the USA, the countries of western Europe, and Japan, each essay in the volume is organized around an important theoretical or policy question; all offer new data analyses, and several offer prescriptions of how to fashion more equitable and humane family and gender systems. The second demographic transition and microeconomic theory of marital exchange are the dominant theoretical models considered; several chapters feature state-of-the-art quantitative analyses of large scale surveys.

Urbanization is a key process in developing countries. Within the next decade over 50 per cent of the world's population will inhabit urban areas and the majority of this growth is concentrated in developing countries.Analysing data for four large countries, this volume focuses on the relationship between economic change and urban growth. Specifically the authors examine the continued growth of industrial employment at the expense of the agricultural sector, the impact of government-controlled regional and industrial policy and the role of migration in response to employment opportunities. There are also important chapters on government responses to the lack of basic infrastructure, and the resulting negative impact on human welfare, in the cities. The volume's coherence results from the cross-country comparisons made by the authors and the conclusions that are not geographically restricted but have potential applications, by urban planners, in all developing countries.

The main demographic revoulution in modern history has been the increased survival of children - the gradual elimination of the biological waste linked to the high mortality of the past. This volume examines the trends of early-age mortality across time and space and the methodological and theoretical problems inherent in such studies. It widens the discussion beyond the standard European focus by including data from Asian and American sources, showing that they offer enormous potential for researchers. At the same time, it makes clear the need for cautious treatment of historical data and points towards the design of techniques for appraising their quality, correcting distortions, and filling gaps.The analysis demonstrates that levels of infant and child mortality are linked not only to material conditions of life but also to social and cultural factors. The authors argue that a better understanding of these interactions can only come from an interdisciplinary approach, where demography joins forces with biology, medicine, public health, and social and economic history.

Women's access to education has been recognized as a fundamental right. At the national level, educating women results in improved productivity, income, and economic development, as well as a better quality of life, notably a healthier and better nourished population. It is important for all kinds of demographic behaviour, affecting mortality, health, fertility, and contraception, The personal benefits that women attach to education vary widely according to region, culture, and level of devlopment, but it is clear that educaiton empowers women, providing them with increased autonomy and resulting in almost every context in fewer children. Beyond these few general assertions, however, there is little consensus on such issues as how much education is required before changes in autonomy or reproductive behaviour occur; whether the education-autonomy relationship exists in all cultural contexts, at all times, and at all levels of development; and which aspects of autonomy are important in the relationship between education and fertility.It is in the need to address these fundamental issues that this book took shape. The author reviews the considerable evidence about education and fertility in the developing world that has emerged over the last twenty years, and then passes beyond the limits of previous studies to address three major questions:BL Does increased education always lead to a decrease in the number of children, or is there a threshold level of education that a woman must achieve before this inverse relationship becomes apparent?BL What are the critical pathways influencing the relationship of women's education to fertility? Is fertility affected because education leads to changes in the duration of breast-feeding? Because it raises the age at marriage? Because it increases the practice of contraception? Or because education reduces women's preferences for large numbers of children?BL Do improvements in education empower women in other areas of life, such as their improving exposure to information, decision-making, control of resources, or confidence in dealing with family and the outside world?Supported by full documentation of the available survey data, this study concludes that such contextual factors as the overall level of socio-economic development and the situation of women in traditional kinship structures complicate the general assumptions about the interrelationships between education, fertility, and female autonomy. It lays out the policy implications of these findings and fruitful directions for future research.

This book presents an overview of the leading prospective studies in developing countries in population and health research. Prospective community studies are concerned with the understanding of the incidence of birth, disease and death. The leading practitioners in this field present the methodologies they have developed and summarize the major findings of their studies. Since many of these methodologies have never been documented and the results are scattered in different publications, the volume provides a great deal of valuable information which is difficult to locate. Thus it will be an indispensable guide to researchers in the field of prospective studies and will also be helpful as a teaching aid. It is a unique compendium of reflective accounts of prospective research, which has been so fundamental to many major innovations regarding the way demographic behaviour is observed, monitored and analysed. It also provides a comprehensive account of the substantive contribution of prospective studies, which include some innovative and seminal findings on community health. The debate on the most efficient kinds of surveys is still ongoing, and some of the surveys are still in progress too. The book will be of great interest for demographers, public health researchers, family planners and survey specialists.

The papers in this volume focus on the impact of economic fluctuations on mortality, fertility and labour markets in Latin America during the 1980s. An attempt is made to distiguish short-term from long-term influences and effects. Broader policy and institutional factors affecting the continent as a whole are examined as well as demographic consequences of economic changes in individual countries.

Sexual Cultures and Migration in the Era of AIDS is the first demographic anthropological study of what happens to sexual behaviour and the rules of risk-taking in sexual encounters when people migrate from countryside to city, from one city to another, or from one country to another culture. It represents a milestone in the study of cross-cultural sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases. At the foreground of the study are commercial sex and prostitution, sexual tourism, heterosexual marriage and social pressure, and homosexuality and bisexuality in emerging sexual cultures. The volume brings together quantitative and qualitative case studies by an international panel of anthropologists, demographers, and sociologists aimed at better understanding the impact of human movement and mobility on sexual change and fertility.

The increasing gap between developed and developing world will be one of the most important themes of the 21st century. The contributions contained in this volume take a multidisciplinary approach to the problem, offering a comprehensive review of the theoretical issues and empirical findings that relate to the complex and multidirectional link between poverty and demographic behaviours and outcomes in the contemporary developing world. The starting point of the volume is an exact definition of poverty. The contributors go on to analyse in the detail its causes and effects, both at the micro and macro level, concentrating on those factors and consequences which relate more directly to the demographic sphere. Population growth, household structure and labour, fertility, AIDS, urbanization, migration, and mortality are amongst the areas covered, with the major themes discussed and elaborated in an introductory overview chapter.

This volume takes stock of the current status of the comparatively new discipline of `Anthropological Demography', and discusses its major methods, its main strengths, and its chief limitations. It includes contributions from both mainstream demographers and foremost anthropologists, all stressing the necessity of a shared agenda for each discipline to progress successfully and avoid marginalization. While the unique research and personal satisfaction afforded by `participant observation' is described, the book also highlights the potential contribution to the understanding of demographic events of much more than the field methods of traditional anthropology. In particular, it stresses the insights possible from qualitative focus group interviews, from longitudinal studies and from a greater interest in `armchair' anthropology, in which demographers complement their quantitative findings with qualitative information and understanding gleaned from a careful reading of the anthropological literature, in the form of both ethnographies and anthropological theories. In addition, it stresses the larger world of the ideal anthropological demographer: a world that includes the cultural context of course, but also takes into account the historical and political forces that condition so much individual behaviour. But the book is also a critical venture. It includes therefore considerable discussion of the common limits of the purely anthropological approach for understanding demographic events and processes, especially from a larger policy perspective, at the same time as it emphasizes the crucial role of the anthropological approach to designing policy that is potentially effective as well as socially and culturally sensitive. It reiterates the often complementary role of anthropological demography and also discusses some specific questions in demographic research which it does not as yet seem to have the capacity to illuminate. The book is aimed primarily at demographers wishing to broaden their research agenda and deepen their understanding of demographic behaviour, but it also hopes to convert mainstream anthropologists to take a more active interest in demographic issues. Both disciplines, after all, have a common intense interest in the kind of life and death issues that they can fruitfully explore together or by using one another's research methods.

The global transformation in the number of children women bear has been one of the most remarkable changes in social behaviour in the twentieth century. The search for explanations of the causes in childbearing behaviour, and particularly in the values attached to children, remains a central research preoccupation of population scientists. This book explores the dimensions of values identified as significant in their impact on fertility decisions. It offers a range of perspectives on a mosaic of values perceived to be of importance in influencing the bearing and caring of children. The book examines the macro and micro theories of the value of children, and considers the multi-dimensional nature of value change. The chapters explore the nature of the mechanisms by which value change may serve to reinforce or promote the ideational essence of change and the impact of pressures for change. It is observed that gender, religion, and culture, all function as complementary lenses through which the necessity of value maintenance or modification is viewed. The book concludes that fertility behaviour is value-driven, but that fertility change is not necessarily driven by value change. The values of most significance to fertility are more fundamental and general values, rather than explicit 'fertility values'.

At the end of the 20th century nearly all developed nations have become countries of immigration, absorbing growing numbers of immigrants not only from developed regions, byt increasingly from developing nations of the Third World. Although international migration has come to play a central role in the social, economic, and demographic dynamics of both immigrant-sending and immigrant-receiving countries, social scientist have been slow to construct a comprehensive theory to explain it. Efforts at theoretical explanation have been fragmented by disciplinary, geographic, and methodological boudaries. Worlds in Motion seeks to overcome these schisms to create a comprehensive theory of international migration for the next century. After explicating the various propositions and hypotheses of current theories, and identifying area of complementarity and conflict, the authors review empirical research emanting from each of the world's principal international migration systems: North America, Western Europe, the Gulf, Asia and the Pacific, and the Southern Cone of South America. Using data from the 1980s, levels and patterns of migration within each system are described to define their structure and organization. Specific studies are then comprehensively surveyed to evaluate the fundamental propositions of neoclassical economics, the new economics of labour migration, segmented labour market theory, world systems theory, social capital theory, and the theory of cumulative causation. The various theories are also tested by applying them to the relationship between international migration and economic development. Although certain theories seem to function more effectively in certain systems, all contain elements of truth supported by empirical research. The task of the theorist is thus to identify which theories are most effective in accounting for international migration in the world today, and what regional and national circumstances lead to a predominance of one theoretical mechanism over another. The book concludes by offering an empirically-grounded theoretical synthesis to serve as a guide for researchers and policy-makers in the 21st century.

The study of Asian historical demography has lagged behind that of its European and American counterparts for some time. This volume serves to narrow the gap by drawing together material from scholars specializing in demography across the spectrum of Asian countries. The collection divides into four parts and contains nineteen chapters covering issues on comparative perspective, fertility, disease and mortality, and marriage and family. The geographic coverage of the chapters is also wide, extending from East Asia to South Asia, with specific emphasis on Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka. Authors focus on a whole range of social groups, discussing how demographic issues affect and have affected both urban and rural dwellers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.This volume, which is perhaps the first to bring together a number of in-depth, specialist studies on Asian population history, should prove a useful and engaging tool for both students and academics in the fields of demography, history, and Asian studies.

This volume challenges the orthodox position on two of the main themes in fertility transition studies: the inevitable link between fewer children and quality of life and the focus on women as the sole important objects of study. In an era of unprecedented fertility decline, there is increasing concern about the lessening worldwide role that men play in the upbringing of children. The immense worldwide variation in the timing and sequencing of a man's life course events, the rise and fall in personal forunes, and the weight of society's hierarchies, all combine to affect the number of children a man fathers, when he fathers them, the number of partners he fathers them with, and the kind of support and recognition he bestows on them. The cross-disciplinary approach favoured here, including ethnographies, national surveys, and historical texts, avoids the narrow focus of many fertility studies texts. By providing detailed studies on a variety of countries ranging from Germany to Papua New Guinea, the contributors build an accurate picture of the global situation, while two Overview chapters give a wider perspective, and the Introduction synthesizes the themes identified and conclusions reached.

This book analyses the specific demographic implications and conditioning factors of women's experience of poverty. By investigating the different experiences that women in developing countries face in attempting to escape from poverty, the contributors illustrate the importance of incorporating the gender perspective into population studies. Higher fertility levels and early nuptiality patterns among the poor are frequently attributed to socioeconomic reasons. The authors of this book demonstrate the importance of looking at other dimensions, such as the subordinate roles of women in their families of origin and the centrality of motherhood in women's lives. Some chapters also show how gender inequality in educational skills and cultural norms regarding motherhood, marital status, and the limiting of physical movement explain why poverty alleviation strategies such as market work and migration may have different results for men and women. Finally, other authors look into women's autonomy in household decisions as a factor that exerts a strong influence on their ability to obtain maternal and infant health care.

This book is a collection of papers by leading scholars whose research concerns economic transfers between generations. The issues addressed have great relevance to demographic issues, particularly the determination of fertility, to economic issues, including equity and growth, and to public policy, especially social security reform. Part I focuses on intergenerational features of the macroeconomy. Advances in the construct ion of generational accounts are described and used to examine how the magnitude and direction of intergenerational transfers influences demographic behaviour, the distribution of income and the accumulation of wealth. Studies presented in Part II consider the role of the state as a provider of economic security for the elderly. The authors draw on international experience and discuss many of the issues that must be confronted if efforts to reform public pension programs are to be successful. Part III considers the intergenerational behaviour of the family. The authors examine competing theories in both industrialized and developing country settings to consider how demographic change, the development of financial institutions, public policy and other economic forces influence the amount, form and timing of intergenerational transfers.

There is general consensus among the international population community that the commitment achieved at the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) to womens empowerment, along with the related goals of improving womens reproductive health and securing their reproductive rights, represented a paradigm shift in the discourse about population and development, even though there are differences in view whether this is a positive change or not. But while the rhetoric about womens empowerment is pervasive, the concept remains ill-defined, and its relationship to demographic processes has not been well articulated, either theoretically or empirically. This book brings together leading researchers and policy advocates to explore whether the concept of womens empowerment is indeed useful for an understanding of key demographic processes. Its contributors identify new directions for demographic research from the analysis of available data that measure womens empowerment, and point to the implications for population-related policies. Demographic research has focused relatively little to date on gender, let alone the question of power. Yet critiques of available data argue that traditional womens-status indicators, such as education and employment, are often not sensitive enough to capture the nuances of gender power relations and the ways in which they govern womens and mens reproductive behaviour. This book moves forward to the complex task of conceptualizing, measuring, and analysing womens empowerment. In laying this groundwork, it provides critically important insights into the causes and consequences of population change, including migration. The book combines conceptual and empirical research with policy directions and considers the relevance of economic, social, and cultural contexts for the health and well-being of women, adolescents, and children. The countries under study are of both the North and the South. This book represents state-of-the-art knowledge on the two-way linkages between womens empowerment and demographic processes.

This compendium of nineteen chapters, written by South Asia scholars and international authorities in the field of population, provides an overview of a range of issues surrounding fertility change in South Asia over the past decade.In the first section of the book, the latest levels and trends in fertility in individual countries are covered. The quality of data is compared and discussed with the aim of clarifying fertility trends in the region as a whole. The section provides an authoritative data source for those interested in pursuing demographic analyses for South Asia as it enters the twenty-first century.The second section presents explanations for the contrasting onset, pace, and differentials in fertility declines experienced by countries in the region. Authors examine a range of alternative explanatory factors, emphasizing issues such as the causal role of gender systems, son preference, linguistic and regional boundaries, and development levels. The viewpoints presented here provide a range of competing theories on the South Asia fertility transition, which will be of particular value to sociologists, historians, and all those interested in comparative research for the region.The concluding section examines the role of policies in the South Asia fertility transition. Policies designed to reduce fertility were developed and launched in this region long before other regions in the world. In particular, family planning programmes were initiated in South Asia. In these final chapters, authors review the outcome of experiments conducted in settings where demand for family planning was constrained by pro-natalist social institutions, and where services were supplied to test the capacity of programmes to foster reproductive change. This section will be of particular interest to those managing reproductive health programmes, formulating population policy, or funding population programmes, as well as to those researching the role of politics and policies in population trends.

This volume brings together studies carried out in a variety of contexts to explore the relevance of the notion of reproductive health and the role of culture in shaping its diverse manifestations. The perspective that guides the collection is informed by anthropological and sociological research on the body, pluralism, and medicalization, and by recent debates regarding women's health and the need to reconcile global agendas and local conditions.The fourteen chapters provide views of how reproductive health is viewed by women and men in different parts of the world, mainly at the level of local communities---in India, Egypt, Mexico, Kenya, and South Africa---but also in centres of power in China and Iran, and in modern (and post-modern) settings of the North and Far East. The methodological approaches used by authors are varied, but all share a concern with the perceptions, decisions, and rationalizations that surround health and reproduction. A central theme is the correspondence between professional and lay models of reproductive health, and some chapters explicitly seek to uncover the logic of practices that appear irrational from a biomedical point of view. By analysing behaviour from the perspective of the actors themselves, they show the relevance of local notions for understanding the factors that constitute risks for reproductive ill-health, including conditions of material deprivation, constraints in seeking care, and inappropriate use of therapies and technologies."Cultural Perspectives on Reproductive Health" illustrates complex processes of negotiation, adaptation, and manipulation in the formulation of ideas and policies related to reproductive health through analyses of such topics as the state's discourse on population, religious constraints on abortion care, professional and legal policies on reproductive technologies, health professionals' response to violence, and the dilemmas that emerge from the new diagnostic and genetic techniques. It also invites reflection on the societal construction of rights across cultures and on the place of cultural explanations in analyses of reproductive health.

This book deals with the important subject of famine demography. It contains case studies of the demography of historical and more recent famines in locations as far apart as Ireland, Finland, India, Burundi, Russia, Greece, Madagascar, and Japan. The authors address issues such as the role of famines in controlling population growth in the past, the nature of interactions between starvation and epidemic diseases during times of famine, and the detailed demographic consequences of famines. In the latter category issues such as the age and cause-specific profiles of excess famine mortality receive particular attention. Famine Demography illustrates how the demographic impacts of famines can vary according, for example, to the nature of the famine causation process and the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of the populations which are affected. The nature and basis of sex differentials in famine mortality are a recurring theme of the book, as are the implications for human fertility and migration.This is the only comparative volume of its kind. It is wide-ranging in time and place, but at the same time focuses sharply on a particular subject. Consequently its contents provide a unique understanding of famine demography, which should be of interest to academics and practitioners involved in limiting the consequences of famines.

This book examines a central issue in understanding recent changes in demographic patterns and the labour market - the increased participation of women in the workforce, and how the nature of this participation has developed. In the context of such economic and labour phenomena as globalization, increasing flexibilty in work patterns, intermittent and part-time employment, and in many countries high underemployment or unemployment, the role of women workers has transformed dramatically.This book explores a number of demographic issues associated with these developments, such as migration in the developed world and transition economies, family formation and dissolution, the autonomy of women migrants, household composition, the evolution of gender systems, and contraceptive behaviour, both as factors that determine the labour market conditions for women and their income levels, and as demographic outcomes. The studies cover a wide-range of situations, from societies with a strong patriarchal ideology and residential female seclusion, to industrialized countries with policies designed to assist women manage both a work and a family role, and makes use of extensive data sets collected at country level. The Editors have sought to maintain an interdisciplinary outlook in the book, and to draw policy implications from the various socio-economic situations examined.

International Migration: Prospects and Policies offers a comprehensive, up-to-date survey of global patterns of international migration and the policies employed to manage the flows. It shows that international migration is not rooted in poverty or rapid population growth, but in the expansion and consolidation of global markets. As nations are structurally transformed by their incorporation into global markets, people are displaced from traditional livelihoods and become international migrants. In seeking to work abroad, they do not necessarily move to the closest or richest destination, but to places already connected to their countries of origin socially, economically, and politically. When they move, migrants rely heavily on social networks created by earlier waves of immigrants, and, in recent years, professional migration brokers have become increasingly common.Developing countries generally benefit from international migration because migrant savings and remittances provide foreign earnings to finance balance of payments deficits and make productive investments. Some developing nations have gone so far as to establish programs or ministries dedicated to the export of workers. Developed nations, in contrast, focus more on the social and economic costs of immigrants and seek to reduce their numbers, regulate their characteristics, and limit their access to social services. Over time, receiving nations have gravitated toward a similar set of restrictive policies, yielding undocumented migration as a worldwide phenomenon. Globalization also creates infrastructures of transportation, communication, and social networks to put developed societies within reach. In the latter, ageing populations and segmenting markets create a persistent demand for immigrant workers. All these trends are likely to intensify in the coming years to make immigration policy a key political issue in the twenty-first century.

Over the past two decades, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS has challenged the public health community to fundamentally rethink the framework for preventing infectious diseases. While much progress has been made on the biomedical front in treatments for HIV infection, prevention still relies on behaviour change. This book documents and explains the remarkable breakthroughs in behavioural research design that have emerged to confront this new challenge: the study of partnership networks.Traditionally, public health research focused on the "knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP)" of individuals, an approach designed for understanding health-related behaviour like seat-belt wearing and cigarette smoking. For HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, however, there are at least two people involved in transmission. This may not seem like a big difference, but in fact it changes everything. First, it means that your risk depends on your partners -- and on their partners, and their partners: it depends on your position in the network of partnerships. Consider, for example, the rise of infections among monogamous women. Second, it means that individuals are not free to simply change their behaviour -- condom use, or abstinence, needs to be negotiated with a partner. both the epidemiology of risk and constraints to behaviour are therefore a function of the partnership network. And our ability to design effective prevention strategies depends on our ability to measure and summarize that network. Using the traditional research designs, you would not see this network at all -- you would only see the unconnected nodes. They key to solving this problem lies in Network Analysis, before now a relatively obscure subfield in Sociology.For empirical studies of networks to become feasible, however, many problems had to be solved. This book documents the rapid progress that has been made. It brings together eight pioneering studies that have sought to map the networks that spread infection around the world. Each chapter reviews the questions that drove the study, the changes in methodology that were needed to implement the network survey, the mistakes and successes encountered, and the central findings that the network design made possible. An introduction provides an overview of network survey design, a glossary provides a summary of network terminology, and example questionnaires from each study provide a template for further research. This is a unique and valuable resource for the international public health research community.

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.