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- Convenor:
-
Peter Kneitz
(Universität Leipzig)
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- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- R2 and 430
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 August, -, Thursday 28 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
The workshop offers a platform to discuss ongoing demographic change and particularly fertility decline in industrialised societies in its relation to the general condition of modernity.
Long Abstract:
Looking closer to the experience of diversity and mutuality expressed in the fundamental decision of getting or not getting a child means to focus on a complex indicator of a given society and its culture. How, it may be asked, the reproduction of generation is intertwined with social and cultural conditions?
The demographic change in industrialised societies in particular provides an opportunity to focus on the impact of modernity and to contribute from the anthropologist point of view to one of the major social changes the nations affected are faced with. The surprising connection of modernisation and globalisation with low fertility rates despite of general prosperity is in historical and comparative respects a singular and still not much understood phenomenon, with major consequences.
The workshop seeks papers, which will make a contribution towards an anthropology of modern demographic change. Participants are encouraged particularly:
- to address the effects of modernity and globalisation on demography, in particular low fertility, and conversely,
- to seek possible consequences for the interpretation of modernity
- to discuss theories and explanations as to refer to methodological questions
- to offer in particular case studies related to diverse cultural backgrounds
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 August, 2008, -Duska Knezevic Hocevar (ZRC SAZU)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, the author presents a case study of ‘non-typical’ couples in Slovenia who, independently of the general trend of below-replacement fertility on national level, have both children and university education.
Paper long abstract:
Given that the year 1980 is widely recognised as the turning point of below replacement fertility trend in Slovenia, and that the lowest fertility rates on the national level have been recorded among the university educated people, the author discusses those couples who, independently of the general trend, obtained both high level of education and statistically above-average number of children. By comparing two generations of four selected families, the author sought to identify the key differences between these people's wider context of reproductive decisions before and after the year 1980. Their reproductive histories go back into socialism times, and extend into post-socialism. A 'bottom-up' explanation of the background of 'non-typical' couples' reproductive decisions could prove conducive to better understanding of complex fertility behaviour, particularly in the view of recent studies that have reported positive relationship between education and high-order births in 'industrialised below-replacement societies'.
Gonçalo Santos (University of Coimbra)
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws on data collected through longitudinal research (1999-2008) in a small Cantonese 'single-lineage village' in South China to provide a detailed rural picture of China's recent fertility transition and to reflect on the process of fertility transition from a cross-cultural perspective
Paper long abstract:
Despite the lack of fully reliable statistics and the significant regional and rural/urban variations, China has achieved between the 1970s and the late 1990s the fastest fertility decline on record for any large human population, though it is still not clear what caused this decline. Was the state and the 'one-child policy' the key factor behind it, or did it result primarily - as most 'classic' demographic theories suggest - from the spectacular socio-economic developments of the post-Mao era? This paper draws on data collected through longitudinal research (1999-2008) in a small Cantonese 'single-lineage village' in South China to seek some local answers to these questions and to reflect more generally on the role of culture in the process of fertility transition. What makes this case study particularly suitable to this goal is that it refers to a part of rural China long associated with strong pronatalist ideals. Given that these cultural ideals were not eradicated during the Maoist era, our focus will be on what happened to the persuasive power of these 'old' ideals as people started to be confronted with both a rampant process of capitalist modernization and a powerful state determined to engineer a national fertility decline. Converging with recent interdisciplinary work in anthropology and demography, the paper seeks not just to characterize the specificity of China's fertility decline but also to draw attention to the diversity of socio-cultural and politico-economic forces affecting human reproductive behaviour.
Margarida Moz (ISCTE)
Paper short abstract:
In my paper, I intend to focus on the gay and lesbian families with children, in Portugal, and how they draw a different demographic reality with no great statistical impact.
Paper long abstract:
With a fertility rate of 1.36 born children/woman in 2007, Portugal stands below the European rate of 1.52, following the tendency of most industrialized countries. The decision of having or not having a child is obviously linked to the social, cultural and economic conditions, and there is more than one way of explaining the fast decline of such a rate. But a fertility rate established by the expectation of how many children a woman will give birth to is already in itself limiting the ways in which we face the issue, since it overshadows important transformations on child bearing and alternative ways of creating a family. In Portugal, there is a significant increase of applications for adopting children, both by couples and single women and men. Simultaneously, alternative families are establishing themselves, having children, and contributing to demographic changes in ways which do not affect the fertility statistics.
Homosexual relationships, often (erroneously) perceived as sterile, are claiming they right to parenthood in Portugal and all over the modern world. Although the legal system fails to recognize their existence, these couples are finding ways to create their families and educate their children, as a legitimate human desire, despite one's sexual orientation.
In a workshop dedicated to questioning the demographic changes and what the decision of having or not having a child means, focusing on the growing and assertive ways in which gays and lesbians decide to have children may contribute to discuss the family and its importance in the modern world.
Diana Marre (Autonomous University of Barcelona) Hugo Gaggiotti (University of the West of England)
Paper short abstract:
The aim of this paper is to explore the blurring of "parents/kinship" with "users/consumers" that pervades the narratives of adoptive families, their organisations, professionals, bureaucrats, and policy makers working on international adoptions in Spain.
Paper long abstract:
Since 2004, Spain has received more internationally adopted children than any other country in the world after the USA. This is a phenomenon leaded by adoptive families organised in powerful associations generally by country of origin of their adopted children. The aim of this paper is to explore the blurring of "parents/kinship" with "users/consumers" that pervades the narratives of adoptive families, their organisations, professionals, bureaucrats, and policy makers working on international adoptions in Spain. Spain has one of the lowest birth rate in the world (1.17 children per woman in 1997 and 1.37 in 2007) and the highest rate in international adoption. In 2006, 43 percent of families who applied for an international adoption in Catalonia -the region with the international adoption highest rate in Spain and in the world per inhabitants- already had children, 52 percent were not infertile and only 35 percent have had some infertility treatment. According to the data and the law, international adoption in Spain is not a form of assisted reproduction. Should be understood this process of 'outsourcing' or 'offshoring' of some reproduction's functions in the same way that other processes of 'outsourcing' or 'offshoring' of productive's functions to the East, South and/or cheaper cost immigrants spaces?