Fertility, Conjuncture, Difference

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.

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.

List of Illustrations, Figures and Tables
Preface

Introduction
Philip Kreager and Astrid Bochow

Chapter 1. The Key to Fertility: Generation, Reproduction and Class Formation in a Namibian Community
Julia Pauli

Chapter 2. Becoming and Belonging in African Historical Demography, 1900-2000
Sarah Walters
This chapter is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY) thanks to the support of the Wellcome Trust.

Chapter 3. Between the Central Laws of Moscow and Local Particularity: The Reproduction of Subgroups in the South of Tajikistan
Sophie Roche and Sophie Hohmann

Chapter 4. Feeling Secure to Reproduce: Economy, Community and Fertility in Southern Europe
Patrick Heady

Chapter 5. Ambivalent Men: Male Dilemmas and Fertility Control in Senegal
Sara Randall, Nathalie Mondain, and Alioune Diagne

Chapter 6. Accounting for Reproductive Difference: Sociality, Temporality and Individuality during Pregnancy in Cameroon
Erica van der Sijpt

Chapter 7. Understanding Childlessness in Botswana: Reproduction and Tswana-nization of Middle-Class Identities in the Twenty-First Century
Astrid Bochow

Chapter 8. Low Fertility and Secret Family Planning in Lesotho
Lena L. Kroeker

Chapter 9. ‘The Doctor’s Way’: Traditional Contraception and Modernity in Cambodia
Eleanor Hukin

Chapter 10. Demographers on Culture: Fertility, Nuptiality, Family Structures
Yves Charbit and Véronique Petit

Chapter 11. Vital Conjunctures Revisited
Jennifer A. Johnson-Hanks

Index