In the last forty years anthropologists have made major contributions to understanding the heterogeneity of reproductive trends and processes underlying them. Fertility transition, rather than the story of the triumphant spread of Western birth control rationality, reveals a diversity of reproductive means and ends continuing before, during, and after transition. This collection brings together anthropological case studies, placing them in a comparative framework of compositional demography and conjunctural action. The volume addresses major issues of inequality and distribution which shape population and social structures, and in which fertility trends and the formation and size of families are not decided solely or primarily by reproduction.

Philip Kreageris Senior Research Fellow in Human Sciences, Somerville College; Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology; and Reseach Associate, Department of Sociology, Oxford University. He has written extensively on the history and conceptual development of population theory and analysis in European culture, and on comparative family systems and anthropological demography.

List of Illustrations, Figures and Tables Preface

IntroductionPhilip Kreager and Astrid Bochow

Chapter 1. The Key to Fertility: Generation, Reproduction and Class Formation in a Namibian CommunityJulia Pauli

Chapter 2. Becoming and Belonging in African Historical Demography, 1900-2000Sarah WaltersThis chapter is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY) thanks to the support of the Wellcome Trust.

Chapter 3. Between the Central Laws of Moscow and Local Particularity: The Reproduction of Subgroups in the South of TajikistanSophie Roche and Sophie Hohmann

Chapter 4. Feeling Secure to Reproduce: Economy, Community and Fertility in Southern EuropePatrick Heady

Chapter 5. Ambivalent Men: Male Dilemmas and Fertility Control in SenegalSara Randall, Nathalie Mondain, and Alioune Diagne

Chapter 6. Accounting for Reproductive Difference: Sociality, Temporality and Individuality during Pregnancy in CameroonErica van der Sijpt

Chapter 7. Understanding Childlessness in Botswana: Reproduction and Tswana-nization of Middle-Class Identities in the Twenty-First CenturyAstrid Bochow

Chapter 8. Low Fertility and Secret Family Planning in LesothoLena L. Kroeker

Chapter 9. The Doctors Way: Traditional Contraception and Modernity in CambodiaEleanor Hukin

Chapter 10. Demographers on Culture: Fertility, Nuptiality, Family StructuresYves Charbit and Véronique Petit

Chapter 11. Vital Conjunctures RevisitedJennifer A. Johnson-Hanks

Index