Paper long abstract:

From its rise to prominence as an academic discipline in the 1940s and 1950s, demography was shaped by theoretical concepts which relied on an evolutionary idea of progress. Initially demographic transition theory predicted a series of changes in population behaviour which would be triggered by definable improvements in economic structure, welfare provision and other indicators of modernisation. From the late 1960s the family planning industry sustained the association between modernisation and fertility limitation. While these variants on modernisation theory have long been attacked by demographers, the dominant theories used to explain twentieth-century Africa’s transition to rapid population growth both rely on various aspects of modernisation.

In Buganda and Buhaya, however, the timing and direction of demographic change over the past century have not been predictable. Factors associated with modernisation such as the commercialisation of agriculture or female education had contradictory demographic consequences. In part this complexity related to the extent to which modernising concepts were hybridised and indigenised. External ideas were adapted, vernacularised by individuals trying to satisfy old family commitments and social expectations as well as new personal ambitions. People in this region had differing notions of what modernity entailed, and reproductive decisions were not always based on rationality, or were affected by competing strategies of rational self-advancement. This paper will argue that sexual desire, the multiple means by which status could be achieved, and a desire for personal autonomy were just some of the factors which help explain the unusual history of fertility change in these societies