The Dictionary of Human Geography (42 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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demographic transition
A framework that explores the historical sequence of changes in fertility, mortality, migration and age structure. This cornerstone of research in DEM ography (see also historical demography) uses widely accessible data (typically, time series records of vital rates), proposes that stages of economic development have particular demo graphic signatures and suggests that population policies encourage zero population growth. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Its foundational concepts drew on French and western EUROPEAN experience in the nine teenth and early twentieth centuries, and described a linked reduction in mortality rates that helped to trigger sustained declines in birth rates. According to the ?classic? transition model (see figure), (national) populations began at a high stationary phase, with both death rates and birth rates high, and overall population growth rates low. Improvements in fresh water supply and sanitation, public health and nutrition (characteristics of the epidemiological transition) begin to support a downward trend in death rates. As this occurred at the same time as birth rates remained high, population growth accelerated during the next ?early expanding? phase. During the third ?late expanding? phase, popu lation growth continued but annual rates of increase slowed down as the linked ?fertility transition? kicked in and birth rates fell in response to diverse factors including urbaniza tion, decreased infant mortality, the changing roles of children and women in society, con traception, and new patterns of nuptuality (Sanderson and Dubrow, 2000). Finally, populations entered a ?low stationary? phase, where both birth and death rates are low, and natural increase is again close to zero. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Considerable research has examined the degree to which, given time, all regions of the world will exhibit vital signs and demo graphic mechanisms that ?converge? on this ideal type (Coleman, 2002). For example, across contemporary sub Saharan africa, there is evidence to both support the diffusion of the transition and question the transition?s assumption of universalism (see Gould and Brown, 1996). Indeed, sensitivity to both historical and spatial variations in linked demographic transitions has led to calls for a reformulation of the classic framework. Noting very high levels of ageing and below replacement fertility across a number of more developed nations, advocates of a new and distinctive second demographic transition discuss how new links between demographic drivers are being shaped by the changing rela tionships between parents and children in society, new living arrangements (including increased rates of cohabitation, mixed mar riages and divorce) and sexual behaviours (including later parenting and high fertility outside marriage) (see, e.g., Ogden and Hall, 2004). In turn, the rise of immigration (NEW PARAGRAPH) (e.g. in response to below replacement fertility) may promote new modes of belonging and family strategies, and create the conditions for another distinctive transition. ajb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Kirk (1996); Van de Kaa (1987). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
demography
The science of human popu lations. For much of the preceding 400 years, the field has concerned itself with the size, distribution and composition of populations, and how changes in these are connected with the three population processes of mortality, fertility and migration (Greenhalgh, 1996). While formal demography has developed math ematical and actuarial techniques to model and project changes in population (see life table; population projection), the interdis ciplinary field of population studies examines demographic change within its broader soci etal setting and makes use of a wide range of approaches (see, e.g., historical demog raphy; life course). Despite its keen interest in population distribution, its interdisciplinary niche and its strong connections with soci ology and economics, demography has had a relatively limited engagement with geog raphy. Although the development of popula tion geography between the 1960s and the 1980s and the growth of spatial demography drew attention to the study of mortality, fertil ity and particularly migration, many geograph ical analyses of issues including poverty, gender roles, social exclusion, urbanization and environmental degradation underplay population factors (but for a recent exception, see Gould, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Descriptions of changes in population size and distribution make use of empirical data on deaths, births, moves and the ages at which these events occur, mostly obtained from population censuses, social surveys or regis ters of population. Population growth within an area is most simply expressed through the balancing equation as follows: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Pt2 ? Pt1 + (Bt1-t2 Dt1?12) (NEW PARAGRAPH) + (It1-t2 Et1-t2), (NEW PARAGRAPH) where P is the population size, B is births, D is deaths, I is in migrants to an area, E is out migrants from an area, t2 is time 2, t1 is time (NEW PARAGRAPH) in the past, and t1 t2 is the time interval (NEW PARAGRAPH) between time 1 and time 2. Knowledge of the ages at which vital events occur allows age specific rates to be used to create synthetic or model populations that approximate actual age compositions of populations, and may be used to project future population scenarios (see population projection). Such stable population theory is at the basis of life tables that are used to calculate life expectancy by age, the number of survivors by age, and thus the impact of the three population processes upon the age structure, and vice versa. Armed with such data, research on changes in popu lation growth and distribution has centred on efforts to build, critique and extend the demographic transition model; for example, through work on differentials in mortality, the onset of fertility decline and, more recently, its recovery (Bongaarts, 2002; Case and Paxson, 2005). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The field has long enjoyed an extremely close some have argued, too close relationship with social policy, whether at the international scale such as the League of Nations? commis sioning of the Office of Population Research?s work on transition theory in the 1940s, or in informing the US administration?s laissez faire position on family planning at the 1984 International Conference on Population and Development, or more recently in assessing the impact of immigration policy or welfare reform measures upon the life chances of low income family members (Biiche and Frick, 2005). A good deal of research effort continues to debate new dimensions of the population resource well being nexus in light of the likely global diffusion of low fer tility and ageing, and the short termism of replacement migration policies (Meyerson, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Connected to this, studies in family demography describe factors behind changes in the timing and nature of decisions about marriage and partnering, divorce and house hold dissolution, leaving and rejoining the par ental home, cohabitation, and transitioning from full time to part time and unpaid work (Holdsworth and Elliot, 2001). The diversifi cation and plurality of households is a theme in work on, for example, mixed marriages, and variations in intergenerational relations and resource flows by class, gender, race and ethnicity (Gershuny, 2000). Many ana lyses link family demography to well being, with an increasing emphasis upon children (Eloundou Enyegue, 2004). Applied research includes the development of geographical informational systems and geodemo graphic techniques; both are used by market ing firms to target launch new products and design sales areas, and by local authorities to deliver services more efficiently. ajb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Greenhalgh (1995); Kent and Haub (2005); Lutz, Sanderson and Scherbov (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
density gradient
The rate of falling off in some value with distance from a central point, as with the distance decay relationships showing land values and population densities declining away from a city centre (cf. alonso model; von thunen model). Such relation ships are often associated with patterns ofsocial contact, diffusion and spatial spread. rj (NEW PARAGRAPH)
dependency ratio
The number of persons aged 0 14 and 65 and over, divided by the number of persons aged 15 64. This total dependency ratio assesses the dependency or reliance of one group upon another, and is one of a suite of measures summarizing age composition in a population (see also the child dependency ratio, or the number of persons aged 0 14 divided by the number of persons aged 15 64, and the aged dependency ratio, or the number of persons aged 65 and older divided by the number of persons aged 15 64). The assumptions that all persons under 15 and over 65 are (equally) dependent, and that all persons within the working ages of 15 64 are (equally) independent are problem atic, and are partly based on particular ideas of work and production in capitalist societies. Other measures reflect broader interest in the links between generations. For example, the caretaker ratio divides the number of females aged 50 64 by the number of persons aged 80 and older, and informs analyses of chan ging care relations (Teo, 1996). Overall, these measures do help expose differences in popu lation composition that have profound social and economic implications, including the future provision of pensions and social sup port, patterns of economic demand and labour supply, and gender relations. (See also age ing; population pyramid.) ajb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Shryock and Siegel (1973). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
dependency theory
A complex body of theory with somewhat varied political orien tations, presenting versions of core periph ery models that purport to explain the underdevelopment of countries in the global south as a consequence of their relationships with the countries of the global north. Central to these relationships have been forms of economic, political and cultural depend ence on the products of the global North, including advanced manufactured goods, polit ical models and sociocultural norms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The earliest major variants of dependency theory developed in latin america and are especially associated with the Argentinean structuralist economist Raiil Prebisch, for years the head of the United Nations (UN) Economic Commission on Latin America (ECLAC) and a founder of the UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Prebisch presented evidence for declining long term terms of trade for global South exporters of agricul tural products and raw materials, resulting in their having to pay relatively more over time for manufactured imports from the global North (Kay, 1989, pp. 31 5). This line of argument, institutionally supported by ECLAC and UNCTAD, contradicted certain features of Ricardian, neo classical trade theory that argued for the benefits to all countries of trade based on comparative advantage (see neo classical economics). Structuralists thus legitimized state policies of import substitution industrialization (ISI) that had been attempted in Latin America since the 1930s. The goal of these ISI policies was to reduce the import of expensive manufactured goods by producing such goods domestically under high protective tariffs. (NEW PARAGRAPH) While Prebisch and other structuralists quickly recognized the limits of ISI strategies (Kay, 1989, pp. 36 41), they nonetheless came under sustained attack from economists who favoured export oriented industrializa tion based on comparative advantage and the maintenance of minimal tariff barriers. At the same time, more politically radical ver sions of dependency theory came to the fore by the 1960s, including the widely read works of Andre Gunder Frank (1967). Gunder Frank, influenced in part by the Cuban revo lution, argued that only a world wide social ist revolution not mere shifts in state trade policies could undercut dependency in the global South and eliminate underdevelop ment, which he saw as an inevitable result of core periphery relationships under global capitalism. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Radical dependency theories gained cur rency beyond Latin America in the 1970s, especially in africa, but this decade also saw the formulation of less radical versions of the dependency thesis, including ?dependent devel opment? (Evans, 1979) and world systems analysis (Wallerstein, 1979), that more read ily allowed for the possibility of some move ment upwards from the global periphery. By the 1980s, however, many development (NEW PARAGRAPH) theorists claimed to see considerable problems with any sort of dependency approach (Corbridge, 1986). Nonetheless, central argu ments put forward by dependency theorists continue to haunt many development debates today (Gwynne, Klak and Shaw, 2003). jgI (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Corbridge (1986); Evans (1979); Frank (1967); Gwynne, Klak and Shaw (2003); Kay (1989); Wallerstein (1979). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
desertification
A term coined in 1949 to refer to an extreme form of ?savannization?, the conversion of forest into savanna, involv ing severe soil erosion and the invasion of dryland plants. The Sahel drought and famine of the early 1970s triggered concern about advance of the Sahara, and extensive scientific debate about bio geo physical feedback (the effect of land use changes on atmospheric processes because of dust, surface reflectance or other factors). This environmental narrative had great power with policy makers (Swift, (NEW PARAGRAPH) . Current understanding (e.g. in the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, (NEW PARAGRAPH) distinguishes between long term large scale climatic processes that create desert conditions, and local causes of ecological deg radation and poverty (Mortimore, 1998). wma (NEW PARAGRAPH)
development
A central keyword of twentieth century political economy and social policy, which can broadly refer to processes of social change or to class and state projects to trans form national economies, particularly in for merly colonized or third world geographies. Cowen and Shenton (1996) provide a geneal ogy of these conceptions of intentional and immanent development emerging from an eighteenth century European intellectual his tory concerned with secularized progress in the wake of social disorder. Such a genealogy must be pluralized and grounded in inter twined spatial, natural and cultural histories of improvement, colonization, commodifica tion, discipline, predation, government, trans formation, destruction and renovation. A category that carries such enormous and variable analytical weight is inevitably con tentious, and the idea of ?development? has always been subject to critique (Cooper and Packard, 1997), long before the efficacy of the idea itself was called into question at the end of the twentieth century, whether for its allegedly inevitable eurocentrism (Escobar, (NEW PARAGRAPH) or for its scepticism of the invisible hand of the market (Lal, 1985). One way to frame the long history of development before the concept?s use is through four key intellectual traditions: (1) political and economic liberal ism and the defence of ?free markets?; (2) Marxist critique of class, class struggle and imperialism; (3) social Darwinist notions of evolution through racially hierarchized envir onments; and (4) anti colonial defence of cul tural difference and the possibility of national self determination. These four currents have provided content, and contention, to what would be thought of as ?development?, as well as to the technocratic and statist enterprise that came together in the wake of mid twentieth century decolonization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The narrower conception of international or intentional development came to its own after the Second World War, in an ensemble of insti tutions, policies, disciplinary formations and, most importantly, practices of intervention in the alleviation of poverty in the Third World recently decolonized nations, as they sought to steer a tenuous path through the geopolitics of the cold war. Development now signified intervention by governments, rich and poor, and by an array of international institutions and organizations in civil society (Cooper and Packard, 1997). Intentional development was shaped by proximal legacies: ideas of ?late development? in Bismarck?s Germany and the nascent Soviet Union, inter war arguments for state intervention either to manage capit ALisM, as envisioned by Keynes, or to resist the destructive aspects of commodification through some form of democratic socialism (as in Polanyi, 2001 [1944]). US political sci entists were crucial to the emerging doctrine of modernization theory as a disciplinary forma tion in the US academy (Gilman, 2003) tied to the conceit that the right kinds of social and economic planning would bring Third World countries in line with Western capitalist norms of social transformation. Development eco nomics and new sTATE capacities fueled the Promethean visions of Third World states, many of whom used modernization theory to navigate through the Cold War, controlling diverse and often undemocratic polities, while forging shifting economies from reliance on pri mary product exports to import substitution industrialization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) This orthodoxy of modernization, statism and developmentalism was soon called into question through oppositional forces of the 1960s and early 1970s, which sought to redefine ?development? in more radical terms. These forces were sometimes inspired by radical anti colonial thinkers such as Fanon (1963 [1961]), or they were spontaneous guer rilla or squatter movements critical of the fail ures of anti colonial nationalists in power. Latin American structuralists and dependency theorists saw ?peripheries? revert to under development and forced stagnation through trade relations with ?metropoles? (see core periphery model and dependency theory). Others turned to peasants neglected by the sys tematic and global dumping of US grain sur pluses. A series of ?Third Worldist? schools of development studies, along with journals such as Monthly Review and the Journal of Peasant Studies, represented this wider climate of what Emannuel Wallerstein calls the ?anti systemic movements? of the 1960s (see Watts, 2001). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The 1970s saw the response from states and multilateral institutions to the oppositional movements of the 1960s, manifest in neopo pulist discourses of incorporation and partici pation within the development establishment. The world bank spoke of ?basic needs?. green revolution transformations reshaped agrarian geographies and associated liveli hoods and expectations. Research and policy interest in the informal sector intensified, while development institutions sought to inte grate women in development in areas of food production and fertility. The 1970s was also a period of deepening global crisis and trans formation in the US?s hegemonic role in rela tion to the geopolitics of finance, currencies and energy. The OPEC oil price hike and the subsequent flood of Eurodollars into offshore US banks led to reckless lending and borrow ing by increasingly indebted Third World countries, and the Debt Crisis of the early 1980s was ?resolved? through geopolitical realignments, allowing new forms of interven tion in sovereign states to ensure repayment to metropolitan banks. Development theory and practice shifted abruptly into a period of forced austerity and structural adjustment, justified through a reinvention of liberal eco nomic doctrine, in what John Toye dubbed ?the neo liberal counterrevolution?. The onset of neo liberalism coincided with the demise of the USSR the massive experiment in state socialism whose birth and death marked hopes and laments of many Leftist develop ment thinkers and Third Worldist nationalisms, while making space to rethink anti imperialist, democratic socialist alternatives to Cold War verities (Nove, 2005 [1983]). (NEW PARAGRAPH) By the 1990s, the focus of development had shifted to East Asia, to economies that had come through years of crisis, and to remarkable transformations in China: a kind of capitalism (NEW PARAGRAPH) with Maoist characteristics, combining fast growth with piling social and environmental costs (see asian miracles/tigers). The twenty first century has in several senses borne the continuing importance of development questions after the highpoint of neo liberal and post development critiques, as well as the continued salience of its four long term themes of liberalism, marxism, social Darwinism and anti colonial radicalism. Neo liberalisms are now seen in relation to state interventions, imperial militarism and class projects of regional elites as well as their adversaries. A revival of interest in Polanyi (2001 [1944]) comes at a time when the social costs of market fundamentalism are clearer, and a key task of development geography is to track its local articulations, as Hart (2001) demonstrates in South Africa. Hart?s work exemplifies the importance of continuing to trace development processes in their spatial diversity, and in relation to development models abstracted from elsewhere. Taking the South African government?s arguments about East Asia as exemplar, Hart argues that Chinese capitalism has relied on histories of land reform and state investment in a social wage, precisely that which has been eroded in the decade following apartheid. This is a powerful call to a development geography engaged with concrete policy problems and popular aspirations that is also careful about tactics. sc (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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