Prudence and Pressure

by Tsuya, Noriko O.; Feng, Wang; Alter, George; Lee, James Z.

• ISBN13: 9780262013529
• ISBN10: 0262013525
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-02-26
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

This pioneering study reconceptualizes the impact of social organizations, economic conditions, and human agency on human reproduction in preindustrial communities in Europe and Asia. Unlike previous studies, in which Asia is meeasured by European standards, Prudence and Pressuredevelops a Eurasian perspective. Drawing on rich new data and the tools of event-history analysis, the authors challenge the accepted Eurocentric Malthusian view that attributes "prudence" (smaller families due to late marriage) to the preindustrial West and "pressure" (high mortality due to overpopulation) to the East, showing instead important similarities between Europe and Asia in human motivation and population behavior. The authors analyze age, gender, family and household, kinship, social class and power, religion, culture, and economic resources in order to compare reproductive strategies and outcomes. They reveal underlying similarities between East and West in two major components of the reproductive regime-marriage and childbearing-and offer evidence showing that preindustrial reproduction was motivated and governed by human agency at least as much as by human biology. Prudence and Pressureis part of a large-scale interdisciplinary effort to use new data and methods to re-examine the Malthusian paradigm of population growth. It represents a significant advance in the fields of historical demography, history, and sociology. Eurasian Population and Family History series

Table of Contents

List of Tables, Figures, and Maps	p. vii
Contributors	p. xvii
Series Foreword	p. xix
Acknowledgments	p. xxiii
Contexts and Models
Simplicity and Complexity	p. 3
Previous Paradigms and New Models	p. 23
Reproduction: Models and Sources	p. 39
Comparative Geographies
Household Organization, Co-resident Kin, and Reproduction	p. 67
Economic Stress and Reproductive Responses	p. 97
Child Control as a Reproductive Strategy	p. 129
Local Histories
Agency, Social Class, and Fertility in Southern Sweden, 1766 to 1865	p. 159
Economic Change and Differential Fertility in Rural Eastern Belgium, 1812 to 1875	p. 195
Patterns of Reproductive Behavior in Preindustrial Italy	p. 217
Casalguidi, 1819 to 1859, and Venice, 1850 to 1869
Family, Household, and Reproduction in Northeastern Japan, 1716 to 1870	p. 249
Agency, Hierarchies, and Reproduction in Northeastern China, 1789 to 1840	p. 287
Conclusion
Differences and Similarities	p. 319
Toward a Comparative Historical Social Science
References	p. 329
Index	p. 363
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.