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.

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This book compares the wellbeing of older Russian adults in the EU, USA, China, Japan, and Russia. Through providing a general overview of population ageing, social, economic and IT-literacy among older Russian adults, it fills the gap in quality of life research in developing and transition societies. The topic is revealed in the context of the modern elderly's changing identity, their life plans, and intergenerational relations. The connection between ageism and sexism are identified and interpreted, thereby using comparative materials on different countries. The book discusses the issue of educating the elderly in a new direction-namely, the use of ICTs. It also presents the result of studies on pension reform discussions over social networks, which illuminate the social response to the political, social, and economic agenda. As such this book will be a valuable read to researchers specialized in aging, gender studies, quality of life studies, Russian studies, ICT adoption studies, and to those studying the social transformation of Russia, Eastern Europe, the BRICS countries, which face similar problems with aging.

The last two decades have witnessed significant new developments in the field of population policy, particularly an increasing trend toward the establishment of national population planning efforts in the countries of the Third World. In this volume, a group of distinguished specialists in the field address some of the most critical questions that have arisen in debates about population policy: What are some of the national policy priorities? How are they implemented? How successful have they been? What is the role of international agencies in the implementation of population policy? What are some of the legal and ethical issues involved? The contributors focus on the Asian region, which has been most active in the development and implementation of population policy, but also offer a geographically balanced treatment of the subject by including papers that discuss the experiences of countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and African nations.

The volume begins by discussing the interactions among legal issues, human rights, and population policy. The ethics of population control and the nature of the population establishment in the United States receive extended treatment in two chapters, followed by an in-depth examination of immigration policy in the United States. A group of papers evaluate population planning efforts in India, China, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, examining such issues as the costs of restrictive programs and the reasons for the persistence of high birth rates in some countries despite extensive family planning programs. The new generation of African population policies and the impact of policies on fertility and family planning in selected Latin American countries complete the country study section of the volume. Concluding chapters assess the roles of the World Bank and the United Nations in shaping Third World population policy. Students of international development, sociology, and population studies will find here important new insights into the complex issues surrounding population planning policies.

Using original primary sources, this book uncovers and analyzes for the first time the politics of fertility and the battle over birth control in South Africa from 1910 (the year the country was formed) to 1945. It examines the nature and achievements of the South African birth-control movement in pre-apartheid South Africa, including the establishment of voluntary birth-control organizations in urban centres, the national birth-control coalition, and the clinic practices of the country's first birth-control clinics. The book spotlights important actors such as the birth controllers themselves, the women of all 'races' who utilized the clinics' services and the Department of Public Health, placing these within an international as well as national context.

Population ageing and globalisation represent two of the most radical social transformations that have occurred. This book provides, for the first time, an accessible overview of how they interact. Ageing has been conventionally framed within the boundaries of nation states, yet demographic changes, transmigration, financial globalization and the global media have rendered this perspective problematic. This much-needed book is the first to apply theories of globalisation to gerontology, including Appadurai's theory, allowing readers to understand the implications of growing older in a global age. This comprehensive introduction to globalisation for gerontologists is part of the Ageing in a Global Context series, published in association with the British Society of Gerontology. It will be of particular interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics in this area.

This book examines the history behind the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of population policies in the more developed, the less developed, and the least developed countries from 1950 until today, as well as their future prospects. It links population policies with the theories of the demographic, epidemiological, and migratory transitions. It begins by summarizing the demographic situation around the world, with an emphasis on population policies and their underlying theories. Then, it reviews the early efforts to reduce mortality and fertility in the developing countries. This is followed by a description of the internationalization of the debate on population issues and the transformation of these programs into more formal population policies, particularly in the developing countries. The book reviews also the situation of the developed countries and their specific challenges - sub-replacement fertility, population aging, and immigration - and examines the effectiveness of population policies. It also explores the way forward and future prospects for population policies over the next decades. The book provides numerous concrete examples from all over the world, and show how population policies are actually implemented and what have been their successes as well as their constraints. Above all, the book highlights the importance of understanding underlying demographic trends when assessing the development prospects of any country.

The book is recommended for not only demographers, social scientists, and policymakers but also economists and political scientists who are interested in social and demographic change around the world. Demography students and researchers who are interested in applying knowledge on population trends and prospects in designing and evaluating public policies will find this an invaluable reference work.
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This book, a reprint project of the Malaysia Study Programme of ISEAS, covers the duration from the time when data are available up to the early eighties. The book presents a comprehensive study of the multiracial population of the region for the period under consideration. The strength of the book lies in the author's deep familiarity with the country where he was educated up to secondary level, and even taught for some years in the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, in the sixties.

Human biological fertility was considered a important issue to anthropologists and colonial administrators in the first part of the 20th century, as a dramatic decline in population was observed in many regions. However, the total demise of Melanesian populations predicted by some never happened; on the contrary, a rapid population increase took place for the second part of the 20th century. This volume explores relationships between human fertility and reproduction, subsistence systems, the symbolic use of ideas of fertility and reproduction in linking landscape to individuals and populations, in Melanesian societies, past and present. It thus offers an important contribution to our understanding of the implications of social and economic change for reproduction and fertility in the broadest sense.

Old-age survival has considerably improved in the second half of the twentieth century. The life expectancy in wealthy countries has increased, on average, from 65 years in 1950 to 76 years in 2005. The rise was more spectacular in some countries: the life expectancy for Japanese women rose from 62 years to 86 years during the same period. Driven by this longevity extension, the population aged 80 and over in those countries has grown fivefold from 8.5 millions in 1950 to 44.5 millions in 2005. Why has such a substantial extension of human lifespan occurred? How long can we live? In this book, these fundamental questions are explored by experts from such diverse fields as biology, medicine, epidemiology, demography, sociology, and mathematics: they report on recent cutting-edge studies about essential issues of human longevity such as evolution of lifespan of species, genetics of human longevity, reasons for the recent improvement in survival of the elderly, medical and behavioral causes of deaths among very old people, and social factors of long survival in old age.

In Introduction to Africana Demography: Lessons from Founders E. Franklin Frazier, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Atlanta School of Sociology scholars from across the country wed Black Sociology with critical demography within an Africana Demography framework. Contributors speak to innovative ways to address pressing issues and have the added benefit of affording many of the scholars denied their rightful place in the sociological and demographic canons. Specifically, the book includes an introduction outlining Africana demography and chapters that provide a critique of conventional demographic approaches to understanding race and social institutions, such as the family, religion, and the criminal justice system. Contributors include: Lori Latrice Martin, Anthony Hill, Melinda Jackson-Jefferson, Maretta McDonald, Weldon McWilliams, Jack S. Monell, Edward Muhammad, Brianne Painia, Tifanie Pulley, David I. Rudder, Jas M. Sullivan, Arthur Whaley, and Deadric Williams.

This book provides a fresh analysis of the demography, health and well-being of a major African city. It brings a range of disciplinary approaches to bear on the pressing topics of urban poverty, urban health inequalities and urban growth. The approach is primarily spatial and includes the integration of environmental information from satellites and other geospatial sources with social science and health survey data. The authors Ghanaians and outsiders, have worked to understand the urban dynamics in this burgeoning West African metropolis, with an emphasis on urban disparities in health and living standards. Few cities in the global South have been examined from so many different perspectives. Our analysis employs a wide range of GIScience methods, including analysis of remotely sensed imagery and spatial statistical analysis, applied to a wide range of data, including census, survey and health clinic data, all of which are supplemented by field work, including systematic social observation, focus groups, and key informant interviews. This book aims to explain and highlight the mix of methods, and the important findings that have been emerging from this research, with the goal of providing guidance and inspiration for others doing similar work in cities of other developing nations.

Since the onset of modernisation the world population has doubled several times and will soon reach 6 billion of people. The annual rate of increase in the world population is approximately 90 million people. This is the largest absolute level of population growth ever recorded. According to the most recent population projections of the United Nations, the world population will probably double again before stabilising at a stationary level. Ninety percent of the present and future population growth is accounted for by developing countries. The fast increase in the size of the population in many developing countries is a serious obstacle to their attempts to overcome their backwardness, make a substantial improvement to their quality of life, and achieve a sustainable way of exploiting their renewable and non-renewable resources. At the same time, non-sustainable consumption and production patterns in the industrial countries and among wealthy citizens in developing countries, place additional burdens on the planet's natural resources and ecosystems. With a view of considering these problems and elaborating policy guidelines, the United Nations staged its International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, Egypt, September 5-13, 1994. This monograph deals with the background to the ICPD, its preparation, proceedings, and contents. It also evaluates its results and recommendations by comparing the ICPD Action Programme with the current scientific literature. The ICPD dealt with the key issues concerning the interrelations between population, development and environment, and their causes, and was not limited to marginal issues such as abortion, promiscuity and homosexuality as was the impression given in the media as a result of the way these questions were distorted by the action of religious fundamentalists. The ICPD Action Programme forms an impressive charter with a broad range of relevant policy recommendations. Nevertheless, compared to most of the current scientific literature, the ICPD seems to underestimate the seriousness and urgency of the issues at stake.

Exhaustively updated, this second edition provides a current assessment of world population and the range of economic, social, and environmental issues it raises. What do we now know about the future capacity of the Earth to support humankind? How do experts approach the wide range of economic, demographic, and environmental issues affected by population rates? The publication of the first edition of World Population: A Reference Handbook offered the first accessible introduction to this vital field of study. Now ABC-CLIO presents a thoroughly updated new edition, incorporating a wealth of new research and data to explore population issues affecting countries all over the world. Readers will see how everything from plagues and famines, to disease control and contraception, to economic development and landmark judicial decisions have influenced population patterns. The work also features two new chapters; an updated timeline of key events relating to global population putting the issue into long-term perspective; and biographies of key individuals to put a human face on the study of population. Primary documents including "Warning to Humanity, November 18, 1992" from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which warns of the perils of continued population growth among the poorer nations and continued "overconsumption" by the richer ones A chronology of population "milestones," such as the 1968 publication by the Sierra Club of Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, which built public awareness of the effects of rapid population increase

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.

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.

The field of political demography - the politics of population change - is dramatically underrepresented in political science. At a time when demographic changes - aging in the rich world, youth bulges in the developing world, ethnic and religious shifts, migration, and urbanization - are waxing as never before, this neglect is especially glaring and starkly contrasts with the enormous interest coming from policymakers and the media.
"Ten years ago, demography] was hardly on the radar screen," remarks Richard Jackson and Neil Howe of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, two contributors to this volume. "Today," they continue, "it dominates almost any discussion of America's long-term fiscal, economic, or foreign-policy direction."
Demography is the most predictable of the social sciences: children born in the last five years will be the new workers, voters, soldiers, and potential insurgents of 2025 and the political elites of the 2050s. Whether in the West or the developing world, political scientists urgently need to understand the tectonics of demography in order to grasp the full context of today's political developments. This book begins to fill the gap from a global and historical perspective and with the hope that scholars and policymakers will take its insights on board to develop enlightened policies for our collective future.

The authors of this work use a novel strategy that combines record linkage and demographic/statistical analysis to produce an internally consistent and robust set of estimates of the African-American population during the period 1930-1990. They interpret the record that emerges, with special reference to longevity trends and differentials. This work is for demographers, sociologists and students of ethnic studies.

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.

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.

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.

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.