Fertile Bonds: Bedouin Class, Kinship, and Gender in the Bekaa Valley

7. Class Differentiation of Demographic Regimes

7 Class Differentiation of Demographic Regimes It is generally acknowledged that one of the most important contributions to the anthropological and sociological study of demography over the last twenty-five years or so has been the identification of class/caste and occupational differentials in fertility and mortality within local communities at different stages of demographic transitions. Evidence of social-class variation in microfertility behavior has helped to rewrite our understanding of human demography, as it directly challenged the prevailing view among demographers that cultural/ideational, rather than material/economic, forces drive demographic change. My aim here is to examine these (mostly rural) empirical case studies and their implications for understanding classrelated demographic differentiation across time-space. In doing so, I hope to identify some of the demographic and social mechanisms that lie behind class inequalities (or the lack thereof) in peasant communities, which can reciprocally inform our reading of class differentiation in nomadic communities discussed in the following chapter. The results from the Princeton European Fertility Project constitute the main source of support for ideational arguments. The European Fertility Project is regarded as being one of the most important and ambitious undertakings in the social sciences to understand the demographic histories of Europe. In 1963, under the supervision of Ansley Coale at Princeton, researchers utilized relatively detailed quantitative data available for the several hundred administrative subdivisions of the nation-states of Europe to document and explain the historical decline in fertility, which had taken place between 1870 and 1960. In addition to putting out eleven volumes over a twenty-year period, the European Fertility Project published a summary volume in 1986, which basically concluded that socioeconomic factors (e.g., degree of urbanization, levels of education, and mortality) are less important than cultural factors (see below) for understanding the timing and patterning of fertility decline in European coun- Fertile Bonds 134 tries. In particular, language, religion, and customs or values were found to be the most important determinants of the onset of fertility transitions within national population.1 For example, in examining the history of fertility decline in Belgium, Ron Lesthaeghe found that linguistic factors account for much of the variation in the decline of marital fertility. Lesthaeghe determined that French-speaking areas of the country experienced fertility decline much earlier (often by several decades) than Flemish-speaking ones, even though the communities being compared had similar socioeconomic characteristics and were located in close geographical proximity.2 While Lesthaeghe found differences in fertility behavior according to linguistic composition of districts, Livi-Bacci finds that religious and regional factors best explain family limitation patterns in Portugal. The onset of fertility decline in Portugal occurred first in the south of the country, even though the north was more industrialized. Livi-Bacci points to religious differences between a Catholic north and Protestant south in order to explain the differential timing of Portuguese marital fertility decline.3 In an attempt to explain these and other similar findings, Susan Watkins proposed that culturally similar areas (in terms of language, religion, ethnic background, and lifestyle) were more likely to share a decline in fertility than areas that were culturally less similar. Watkins attributes the uniform demographic experiences of distinct cultural groups to the existence of shared communication communities (afforded by language), which allow ideas of family planning to diffuse quickly until they reach a cultural or geographic barrier to their further spread. As a result, once ideas of family limitation took root, they spread very quickly within provinces and nations that shared a common culture.4 Similarly, in reviewing the European Fertility Project’s findings on historical Europe and data on the developing world (obtained from forty-one developing countries collected for the World Fertility Survey), John Cleland and Christopher Wilson conclude that it is the “culture” of subpopulations, loosely defined by religion, language, or region, that exerts primary influence on the patterning of reproductive change. The authors contend that peoples within cultural groups or regions tend to be relatively homogeneous in their fertility-decline experiences, in spite of the fact that regions often exhibit considerable internal variation in levels of socioeconomic development , education, or in the availability of family-planning services.5 Cleland and Wilson uphold the primacy of broader social forces in explaining marital fertility decline in Europe: Class Differentiation of Demographic Regimes 135 The fact that, within culturally homogeneous populations, birth control and resulting marital fertility decline spreads to all sectors within...