The temptations of a new genetically informed eugenics and of a revived faith-based, world-wide political stance, this study of the interaction of science, religion, politics and the culture of celebrity in twentieth-century Europe and America offers a fascinating and important contribution to the history of this movement. The author looks at the career of French-born physician and Nobel Prize winner, Alexis Carrel (1873-1944), as a way of understanding the popularization of eugenics through religious faith, scientific expertise, cultural despair and right-wing politics in the 1930s and 1940s. Carrel was among the most prestigious experimental surgeons of his time who also held deeply illiberal views. In Man, the Unknown (1935), he endorsed fascism and called for the elimination of the unfit. The book became a huge international success, largely thanks to its promotion by Readers' Digest as well as by the author's friendship with Charles Lindbergh. In 1941, he went into the service of the French pro-German regime of Vichy, which appointed him to head an institution of eugenics research. His influence was remarkable, affecting radical Islamic groups as well Le Pen's Front National that celebrated him as the founder of ecology. It includes a foreword by Herman Lebovics.

In this urgent book, Alan M. Dershowitz shows why American Jews are in danger of disappearing - and what must be done now to create a renewed sense of Jewish identity for the next century. In previous times, the threats to Jewish survival were external - the virulent consequences of anti-Semitism. Now, however, in late-twentieth-century America, the danger has shifted. Jews today are more secure, more accepted, more assimilated, and more successful than ever before. They've dived into the melting pot - and they've achieved the American Dream. And that, according to Dershowitz, is precisely the problem. More than 50 percent of Jews will marry non-Jews, and their children will most often be raised as non-Jews. Which means, in the view of Dershowitz, that American Jews will vanish as a distinct cultural group sometime in the next century - unless they act now. Speaking to concerned Jews everywhere, Dershowitz calls for a new Jewish identity that focuses on the positive - the 3,500-year-old legacy of Jewish culture, values, and traditions. Dershowitz shows how this new Jewish identity can compete in America's open environment of opportunity and choice - and offers concrete proposals on how to instill it in the younger generation.

By examining the metropolitan fringes of Houston in Montgomery County, Texas, and Washington, D.C., in Loudoun County, Virginia, this book combines rural, environmental, and agricultural history to disrupt our view of the southern metropolis. Andrew C. Baker examines the local boosters, gentlemen farmers, historical preservationists, and nature-seeking suburbanites who abandoned the city to live in the metropolitan countryside during the twentieth century. These property owners formed the vanguard of the antigrowth movement that has defined metropolitan fringe politics across the nation. In the rural South, subdivisions, reservoirs, homesteads, and historical villages each obscured the troubling legacies of racism and rural poverty and celebrated a refashioned landscape. That landscape's historical and environmental "authenticity" served as a foil to the alienation and ugliness of suburbia. Using a source base that includes the records of preservation organizations and local, state, and federal government agencies, as well as oral histories, Baker explores the distinct roots of the environmental politics and the shifting relationship between city and country within these metropolitan fringe regions.

Susan M. De Vos uses comparative and life course perspectives to provide an in-depth demographic study of the household. Based on data gathered by the World Fertility Survey, this illuminating reference explores household composition in six Latin American countries and compares the situation with that in the United States and western Europe as well as with each other. The study examines the complex household; non-family household living; and the living arrangements of children, young adults, middle-aged people, and elderly people.

This volume presents a state of the art coverage of the measurement and evolution of mortality over time. It describes in great detail the changes in the cause patterns of mortality, the changes in mortality patterns at different ages, and specific analyses of mortality in particular countries. Derived from a meeting of the European Working Group on Health, Morbidity and Mortality held at the Vienna Institute of Demography, September 2011, it presents a cross-section of the work and concerns of mortality researchers across Europe, ranging from London and Madrid in the west to Moscow in the east, with a few additions from further afield. Although most of the papers focus on a particular population, the range of the papers is broad; taken together they present an inter-disciplinary cross-section of this multi-faceted field. Coverage includes estimating life expectancy in small areas, with an application to recent changes in US counties; socioeconomic determinants of mortality in Europe using the latest available data and short-term forecasts; predicting mortality from profiles of biological risk and performance measures of functioning; infant mortality measurement and rate of progress on international commitment using evidence from Argentina; avoidable factors contributing to maternal deaths in Turkey; changes in mortality at older ages: the case of Spain (1975- 2006); variable scales of avoidable mortality within the Russian population; long-term mortality decline in East Asia, and much more. Perspectives in Mortality Research will serve as a valuable resource for professionals and students in sociology, demography, public health and personal finance."

Birth rates are falling and fertility rates are well below replacement levels. At the same time, the economic crisis has forced governments to scale back public spending, reduce child support, and raise the retirement age, causing immense social conflict. Taking a step outside the disciplinary comfort zone, Whither the Child? asks how demography affects individuals and society. What does it feel like to live in a low fertility world? What are the consequences? Is there even a problem - economically, culturally and morally? No other book confronts so many dimensions of the low fertility issue and none engage with the thorny issues of child psychology, parenting, family, and social policy that are tackled head-on here.

An estimated 75,000 Iranians emigrated to Britain after the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. They are politically, religiously, socio-economically and ethnically heterogeneous, and have found themselves in the ongoing process of settlement. The aim of this book is to explore facets of this process by examining the ways in which religious traditions and practices have been maintained, negotiated and rejected by Iranians from Muslim backgrounds and how they have served as identity-building vehicles during the course of migration, in relation to the political, economic, and social situation in Iran and Britain. While the ethnographic focus is on Iranians, this book touches on more general questions associated with the process of migration, transnational societies, Diasporas, and religious as well as ethnic minorities.

This broad-visioned and insightful book examines the march toward global consolidation of our many ethnic, racial, and nationality groups. About 100,000 years ago the dispersion of what was then a homogenous human population from its point of origin in Eastern Africa began. This was slowly followed by the emergence of ethnic and racial differences among the then separated human populations. The Agricultural Revolution, 10,000 years ago, began the long process of re-establishing contact and eventually consolidating the human species once again, but this time globally. Wallace contends that consolidation will contribute greatly to the survival of humankind by reducing the deadly threats humans pose to each other. He also argues that ethnic, racial and nationality consolidation does not imply cultural homogeneity; diversity based on interest, vocation, and other factors will serve as even more fertile replacements. The book is expertly researched.

Russia and the former Soviet Union, and the lands of the former Hapsburg Empire have an extraordinarily complex and varied pattern of ethnic settlement which has extended a great influence of their historical development. This multi-authored volume seeks new interpretations and confronts issues as diverse as the political role of Czech gymnastic clubs, Russian-Muslim relations in the Russian Empire, the ethnic factor in Stalin's purges, and the nature of Russian imperialism in Finland.

The Economics of Education: A Comprehensive Overview, Second Edition, offers a comprehensive and current overview of the field of that is broadly accessible economists, researchers and students. This new edition revises the original 50 authoritative articles and adds Developed (US and European) and Developing Country perspectives, reflecting the differences in institutional structures that help to shape teacher labor markets and the effect of competition on student outcomes.

This work is part of a series of original articles on research in social movements, conflicts and change. It carries papers that are broad in scope and methodologically diverse.

This is the 20th volume in a series of research articles in social movements, conflicts and change. The papers are broad in scope and methodologically diverse.

The history of Asian immigrants in Canada is more than a century old, and the number of persons of Asian descent has more than doubled over the past fifteen years, yet until now there has been no systematic study of these Asian-born Canadians. Using specifically obtained demographic data from Statistics Canada, Shiva S. Halli has investigated differences in family size among Asian ethnic groups in Canada in order to examine inter-group differences and to pinpoint causes for such variations. The author examines the context of fertility differentials by looking at social, cultural, and historical backgrounds, and attempts to utilize the minority status hypothesis, which was originally applied to ethnic groups in the United States, to explain differences in Asian ethnic fertility in Canada.

This book provides an up-to-date summary of the consequences of demographic aging for labor markets, financial markets, economic growth, social security schemes and public finances in Germany, essentially reflecting the present state of knowledge in any of these areas. All contributions are written by leading experts in their fields and are based on results that emerge at the forefront of current research.

Throughout history human societies have sought to manage their reproductive lives to make them fit in with their social, economic and biological conditions. But the different ways communities regulate their fertility, penetrating every aspect of their social life, are so varied and specific that they are often incomprehensible to outsiders. In this book a group of anthropologists set out to throw new light on the dynamics of human reproduction in the world today, looking at the intricate ways that people manage their reproductive life across different cultures, and highlighting the wider meaning of human reproduction and its impact on social organization. The importance of human agency, ethnic boundaries, the regulation of gender relations, issues of fertility and infertility, the significance of children and motherhood and the problems of two large vulnerable social groups, youth and refugees, are all considered in their broader social contexts.

"Over the past decade, the impacts of demographic trends on international security and on peaceful relations between and within states have come to the fore in ways not seen since the aftermath of World War II. An evolving and more complex set of changes in the size, distribution, and composition of populations has become the basis for a new look at the security effects of changes in the size, distribution, and composition of populations. This book is an attempt to lay out the new look, to take issue with some of the prevailing views on the political consequences of population change and to suggest where the concerns are realistic and where they are not." (From the Preface) This book not only offers a magisterial analysis of the political effects of the dramatic population changes that are taking place in countries all around the world, it also represents the testimony of one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of migration and population studies.

This textbook is for graduate students and research workers in social statistics and related subject areas. It follows a novel curriculum developed around the basic statistical activities: sampling, measurement and inference. The monograph aims to prepare the reader for the career of an independent social statistician and to serve as a reference for methods, ideas for and ways of studying of human populations. Elementary linear algebra and calculus are prerequisites, although the exposition is quite forgiving. Familiarity with statistical software at the outset is an advantage, but it can be developed while reading the first few chapters.

" This] ... excellent overview ... should be valuable in medical anthropology, gender and demography studies. It demonstrates the value of anthropology in exploring the varied cultural and economic contexts for reproductive decisions and sexual power relations." . Social Anthropology (EASA)

..". the authors provide innovative ethnographic data and analysis ... This edited volume is notable for its coherence and the consistent attention to the themes of the three sections." . American Ethnologist

Throughout history human societies have sought to manage their reproductive lives to make them fit in with their social, economic and biological conditions. But the different ways communities regulate their fertility, penetrating every aspect of their social life, are so varied and specific that they are often incomprehensible to outsiders. In this book a group of anthropologists set out to throw new light on the dynamics of human reproduction in the world today, looking at the intricate ways that people manage their reproductive life across different cultures, and highlighting the wider meaning of human reproduction and its impact on social organization. The importance of human agency, ethnic boundaries, the regulation of gender relations, issues of fertility and infertility, the significance of children and motherhood and the problems of two large vulnerable social groups, youth and refugees, are all considered in their broader social contexts."

First published in 1976, Economics and Demography discusses how the world population doubled in the thirty years prior to its publication, and considers the economic implications of this demographic transformation. Professor Bowen, with many years' experience of research into the economic and statistical aspects of population and world development, provides a survey of the population of the world, and of how political economists have explained population growth. The author's survey looks first at the mechanisms of growth - fertility, mortality, and migration - followed by an account of theories of growth from Adam Smith to the present day. Professor Bowen, a former fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, who taught at universities in England, America, Australia and Asia, writes from the point of view of a political economist rather than a demographer, and Economics and Demography is of particular value to students of development, development economics and demography within departments of economics, economic history and geography.

With more and more global economic wealth and power resting with fewer and fewer people, and given the acute land inequalities in the rural areas of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, how valid are the dominant theories about the nature of rural livelihoods? How can the intricacies of the economic and social transformations that are unfolding in the rural areas of developing countries best be understood? The authors of Equitable Rural Socioeconomic Change address these questions as they explore the interrelated themes of land inequality, climate dynamics, and technological innovation across varied rural landscapes, primarily in South Africa, but also in Rwanda, and Brazil.

This book provides a summary of and guide to the archival and library holdings of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. The Center has been a valuable resource for researchers for over twenty-five years. This guide will be a useful aid to those researching topics on immigration, ethnicity, labor, women, religion, journalism, education, and other areas of American social and cultural history. The volume includes chapters on separate ethnic groups. Each chapter reflects the organization of the collections and finding aids at the Center and includes descriptions of manuscripts, monograph, newspaper, and serial holdings for the individual ethnic groups. An index provides access to the material.

Most advanced democracies are currently experiencing accelerated population ageing, which fundamentally changes not just their demographic composition; it can also be expected to have far-reaching political and policy consequences. This volume brings together an expert set of scholars from Europe and North America to investigate generational politics and public policies within an approach explicitly focusing on comparative political science. This theoretically unified text examines changing electoral policy demands due to demographic ageing, and features analysis of USA, UK, Japan, Germany, Italy and all major EU countries. As the first sustained political science analysis of population ageing, this monograph examines both sides of the debate. It examines the actions of the state against the interests of a growing elderly voting bloc to safeguard fiscal viability, and looks at highly-topical responses such as pension cuts and increasing retirement age. It also examines the rise of 'grey parties', and asks what, if anything, makes such pensioner parties persist over time, in the first ever analysis of the emergence of pensioner parties in Europe. Ageing Populations in Post-Industrial Democracies will be of interest to students and scholars of European politics, and to those studying electoral and social policy reform. Official publication date 1st January 2012.

Political scientists, demographers, legal scholars, and historians have come together in this volume, under the direction of the late Myron Weiner, one of the leading scholars in this field, to address three of the major sets of questions in the field of political demography: How changes in demographic variables - population size, growth, distribution, and composition - influence threats (real or perceived) to a country's political stability and security; how governments respond to demographic trends; and how governments attempt to change demographic variables in order to enhance national security.

The increasing importance of sickness and disability data across health-related disciplines is the focus of this concise but comprehensive resource. It reviews the basics of morbidity at the population level by defining core concepts, analyzing why morbidity has overtaken mortality as central to demographic study, and surveying ways these data are generated, accessed, and measured. Subsequent chapters demonstrate how this knowledge can be used to better understand-and potentially solve-critical public health issues, benefitting not only populations served, but also areas such as health services planning, resource allocation, and health policy-setting. To make this material useful to the most readers, this reference: Explains why and how morbidity data are categorized by health professionals and other data users. Examines various methods of identifying and measuring morbidity data. Identifies demographic and non-demographic factors associated with morbidity. Describes and evaluates sources of U.S. morbidity data. Reviews the current state of morbidity in the U.S., and what it means for healthcare and society in general. Suggests future uses of morbidity data in reducing health disparities and improving population health. In Sickness and In Health is uniquely relevant to demographers and demography students, public health professionals, and epidemiologists. Its presentation of concepts and applications makes the book a valuable classroom text and a useful guide for those addressing challenges facing U.S. healthcare.