First published in This volume grew out of concerns raised by the contributors and a few others over the current status of human ecology within the field of sociology. Stemming from conferences and subsequent discussions by a group of sociologist-demographers on recent developments in sociological human ecology which started at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in 1976, the original essays contained in this book are designed to review and assess the current state of knowledge in the field.

First published in This volume grew out of concerns raised by the contributors and a few others over the current status of human ecology within the field of sociology. Stemming from conferences and subsequent discussions by a group of sociologist-demographers on recent developments in sociological human ecology which started at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in 1976, the original essays contained in this book are designed to review and assess the current state of knowledge in the field.

The completion of this volume would not have been possible without the generous and dedicated help of numerous people. The book had its genesis in a conference held at Cornell University in the fall of 1990 that was organized by Dudley Poston, Paul Eberts, and Michael Hannan, all professors at the time at Cornell. With the very generous financial assistance of David Call, then the dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Poston, Eberts, and Hannan put together a two-day conference oflectures and papers by human ecologists from Cornell University and elsewhere. The conference focused on sociological human ecology and celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Amos Hawley's Human Ecology (Ronald Press 1950). Professor Hawley was the keynote speaker at the conference. Many of the authors of the chapters in this volume presented earlier versions at the Cornell conference in 1990. Cornell's Departments of Rural Sociology and Sociology also contrib uted financial assistance; however, without Dean Call's very generous support, the conference would not have been possible. A few months after the conference, Poston and Michael Micklin discussed the possibility of asking the various authors of the Cornell conference papers to revise them for publication in a volume on sociological human ecology. Many opted to do so, but others did not because of time and other kinds of commitments and constraints.

This comprehensive handbook provides an overview and update of the issues, theories, processes, and applications of the social science of population studies. The volume's 30 chapters cover the full range of conceptual, empirical, disciplinary, and applied approaches to the study of demographic phenomena. This book is the first effort to assess the entire field since Hauser and Duncan's 1959 classic, The Study of Population. The chapter authors are among the leading contributors to demographic scholarship over the past four decades. They represent a variety of disciplines and theoretical perspectives as well as interests in both basic and applied research.

The completion of this volume would not have been possible without the generous and dedicated help of numerous people. The book had its genesis in a conference held at Cornell University in the fall of 1990 that was organized by Dudley Poston, Paul Eberts, and Michael Hannan, all professors at the time at Cornell. With the very generous financial assistance of David Call, then the dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Poston, Eberts, and Hannan put together a two-day conference oflectures and papers by human ecologists from Cornell University and elsewhere. The conference focused on sociological human ecology and celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Amos Hawley's Human Ecology (Ronald Press 1950). Professor Hawley was the keynote speaker at the conference. Many of the authors of the chapters in this volume presented earlier versions at the Cornell conference in 1990. Cornell's Departments of Rural Sociology and Sociology also contrib uted financial assistance; however, without Dean Call's very generous support, the conference would not have been possible. A few months after the conference, Poston and Michael Micklin discussed the possibility of asking the various authors of the Cornell conference papers to revise them for publication in a volume on sociological human ecology. Many opted to do so, but others did not because of time and other kinds of commitments and constraints."