Categories and Contexts: Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical Demography (International Studies in Demography)

424 Pages·2004·1.99 MB·English

by  Simon Szreter

CATEGORIES AND CONTEXTS
ii
The International Union for the Scientific Study of Population Problems was set up in 1928, with Dr Raymond Pearl
as President. At that time the Union's main purpose was to promote international scientific co-operation to study the
various aspects of population problems, through national committees and through its members themselves. In 1947
the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) was reconstituted into its present form.
It expanded its activities to:
• stimulate research on population
• develop interest in demographic matters among governments, national and international organizations,
scientific bodies, and the general public
• foster relations between people involved in population studies
• disseminate scientific knowledge on population.
The principal ways through which the IUSSP currently achieves its aims are:
• organization of worldwide or regional conferences
• operations of Scientific Committees under the auspices of the Council
• organization of training courses
• publication of conference proceedings and committee reports.
Demography can be defined by its field of study and its analytical methods. Accordingly, it can be regarded as the
scientific study of human populations primarily with respect to their size, their structure, and their development. For
reasons which are related to the history of the discipline, the demographic method is essentially inductive:progress in
knowledge results from the improvement of observation,the sophisticationof measurement methods, and the search
for regularities and stablefactors leading totheformulation ofexplanatory models. Inconclusion, thethreeobjectives
of demographic analysis are to describe, measure, and analyse.
International Studies in Demography is the outcome of an agreement concluded by the IUSSP and Oxford
UniversityPress.ThejointseriesreflectsthebroadrangeoftheUnion'sactivities;itisbasedontheseminarsorganized
bytheUnionandimportantinternationalmeetingsinthefieldofpopulationanddevelopment.TheEditorialBoardof
the series is comprised of:
John Cleland, UK
Henri Leridon, France
John Hobcract, UK
Richard Smith, UK
Georges Tapinos, France
Categories and Contexts: Anthropological and
Historical Studies in Critical Demography
Edited by
SIMON SZRETER
HANIA SHOLKAMY
A. DHARMALINGAM
GreatClarendonStreet,OxfordOX26DP
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Foreword
Demography has in many ways been a great academic success story. Coming of age as a modern scientific pursuit in
conjunctionwith rising concerns in the richer countries about a multiplyingworldpopulation that seemed to threaten
futureprosperity,ifnotworldfamineandmisery,itofferedapparentlyobjectivemethodsfordescribingandexplaining
population dynamics. The sharp decline in fertility in much of the worldover the past couple of decades has reduced
alarm over the prospect of population explosion, but other population problems have quickly taken its place among
both the general public and the world's power-holders. Most of the wealthier countries today are gripped with worry
about perilously low fertility rates and ageing populations, while international migration produces its own anxieties in
thesecountries;andhorrificprognosticationsofdevastationoftheHIV/AIDSepidemicinAfricaleadtoawholenew
field of demographic study.
Yetifdemographyhas beena ‘cando’ ofdiscipline,onethathasnotinthepastoverlytroubleditselfwiththekinds of
epistemological questions that have, during the past few decades, so exercised anthropologists, among others, recent
years have seen a crack in the positivist façade. The rise to dominance of the national sample survey in demography,
which on the one hand is one of the clearest signs of this positivism, has on the other led to some cries of concern
from within the demographic community. Can one really claim to have knowledge about demographic behaviour and
itscausesinasocietyaboutwhichoneknowsalmostnothing otherthanwhatisprovidedinthemachine-readabledata
provided by a Demographic and Health Survey? Other cracks have appeared in the dominant theoretical stance that
formerly helped define demography. Demographic transition theory—seeking to explain the course of fertility
decline—embarrassingly failed to be supported by empirical study, leading some of its former champions to call for
more ‘cultural’ explanations of demographic behaviour, although exactly what this might entail was unclear. Indeed,
things have gotten to the point where two American demographers recently published a book titled Demography in the
Age of the Postmodern (Nancy Riley and James McCarthy, Cambridge University Press, 2003), calling for a radical
reappraisal of the epistemological tenets of demographic study.
Categories and Contexts offers an invaluable entry point to these new perspectives by focusing on the nature of the
categories employed in demographic analysis and the quandaries faced by a discipline that seeks objectivity and the
meta-languageofscience, yetisbyitsverynaturerooted ina highlypoliticizedprocessof knowledgeconstructionand
the wielding of power. The book addresses issues that reflect the conundrum of sophisticated demographic research:
comparativeresearchandtheory-buildingwouldappear torequiretheconstructionofstandard categoriesforanalysis,
yet the categories actually employedin demography are for the most part western folk categories dressed in scientific
garb.
vi FOREWORD
Influenced by a variety of important recent theoretical developments in anthropology and cultural studies, and
informed bya historicalperspective,thestudiesinthisvolumesuggest an excitingintellectual agenda that promises to
help reinvigorate demography while drawing demography more closely to anthropology and history. Categories and
Contextsalso helpsshowanthropologistsand historians howimportanttheworkdoneindemographyis, whilearguing
for the centrality of politics to the understanding both of demographic behaviour and of its study.
From racial pigeon-holing in Brazil to the construction of ‘nationality’ categories in the USSR, from the English
General RegisterOffice inthenineteenth century toMozambiqueintheaftermathof itscivilwar inthelatetwentieth
century, the frenetic process of dividing people into categories is here revealed in all its complexity, and the
consequences of this process for our understanding of culture and behaviour are brought provocativelyinto view.
David I. Kertzer
Acknowledgements
We, the co-editors of this volume, have a wide range of persons to thank. They fall into two categories and contexts.
First, wewishtothankallthosewhowereinvolvedinbringing aboutthemostenjoyableandlivelyseminarinCairoin
September 1999, whereall of the chapters and theideas whichinform thisbook were first debated and discussed. All
of those who gave the many stimulating papers and who acted as discussants and moderators of sessions are listed
separatelyinthebriefRecord ofPapers and Participants, whichfollows onp. xiii.Inaddition, we wouldliketorecord
our thanks to thestaffof theAmerican Universityin Cairoand PopulationCouncil,Cairo, totheIUSSPofficialswho
managed the seminar, Jane Verral and Christiane Turco, and to Rolla Khadduri, the nominated Junior Demographer
for theseminar. Rollasaved theday on many occassions and displayed great organizational and social skills for which
she was appreciated by organizers and participants. We also thank the International Population Council MENA
regional office and its director Barbara Ibrahim for lending the organization's support and for organizing and
supporting the special session on Youth.
Second, we wish to thank individuallyeach oneof our fellow members of theIUSSPAnthropology and Demography
Committee,thestaffofIUSSPandOxfordUniversityPressandthetwoanonymousreadersappointedbyIUSSP,who
were also helpful influences on the volume's overall shape and content.
Mostoftheworkinpreparingthisvolumeforpublicationwascompletedwhileoneoftheeditors,SimonSzreter,held
an Economic and Social Research Council Fellowship, Award Number R000271041.
Simon Szreter
Hania Sholkamy
A. Dharmalingam
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Contents
List of Contributors xi
Record of Papers and Participants at the IUSSP Seminar on Social Categories in Population Research, Cairo, Egypt,
15–18 September 1999 xiii
List of Tables xvi
PART I. THE HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF DEMOGRAPHY AND ITS CATEGORIES
1. Contextualizing Categories: Towards A Critical Reflexive Demography 3
Simon Szreter, Hania Sholkamy, and A. Dharmalingam
2. Objectifying Demographic Identities 33
Philip Kreager
3. Malthus' Anti-Rhetorical Rhetoric, or, on the Magical Conversion of the Imaginary into the Real 57
Charles L. Briggs
PART II. CATEGORIES AS POLITICAL INTERVENTIONS
4. Editors' Introduction 79
Simon Szreter, Hania Sholkamy, and A. Dharmalingam
5. The Linguistic Construction of Social and Medical Categories in the Work of the English General Register
Office, 1837–1950 86
Edward Higgs
6. Racial/Colour Categorization in US and Brazilian Censuses 107
Melissa Nobles
7. Towards a Soviet Order of Things: The 1926 Census and the Making of the Soviet Union 126
Francine Hirsch
8. Making up China's ‘Black Population’ 148
Susan Greenhalgh
9. Internal Diaspora and State Imagination: Colombia's Failure to Envision a Nation 173
Santiago Villaveces-Izquierdo
10. Users, Non-users, Clients, and Help-seekers: The Use of Categories in Research on Health Behaviour 185
Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer