POPULATION AND SOCIETY: AN INTRODUCTION

2016

Polity Press

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Population+and+Society%3A+An+Introduction-p-9781509508266

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6838-3

REVIEWS

Prepublication Reviews:

Anyone wanting to learn the basics of demography and the ways it relates to broader social forces will profit from reading this book. Carter provides an overview of the field that is informative and wide-ranging. -- William H. Frey, The Brookings Institution

Carter offers a comprehensive yet concise overview of the major concepts, theories, and data sources in the fields of classic and social demography. Written in an accessible style and leveraging the most recent data from countries around the world, the book highlights the salience of the demographic perspective in understanding all contemporary social problems and provides multiple examples of how demographic forces both reflect and constrain individual choices. -- Shannon Monnat, Pennsylvania State University

Population and Society does an outstanding job of bringing to life demographic processes such as fertility, mortality, and migration by illustrating their impact using a range of student-engaging, in-depth examples and easy-to-understand data. The book applies demographic events to a range of critical social issues, from environmental degradation, overpopulation, and gender inequality, to the everyday choices we make in our own lives. In short, this book is an outstanding accomplishment! -- Sharlene Hesse-Biber, Boston College

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Teaching Sociology Review:

Demography textbooks tend to be high priced and lacking an explicit sociological perspective. Population and Society has neither of these weaknesses. Orienting his book in C. Wright Mills’s concept of the sociological imagination, Gregg Lee Carter introduces students to demography by emphasizing the degree to which demographic processes are involved in virtually all subjects of sociological inquiry. His goal, successfully achieved in my opinion, is to provide students access to the power of social demography to help explain a wide variety of social problems. At about half the length and half the price of many demography textbooks, Population and Society provides an accessible foundation for the study of social demography. Used as a primary text for undergraduate courses in social demography, Carter’s book allows plenty of room for instructors to supplement the book with online videos, readings on specific population processes or problems, activities that help students see themselves as demographic actors, and projects in which students do their own demographic analyses. Graduate instructors might find it more useful as a basic introduction to the field at the beginning of a course.

Carter organizes the book into five chapters. The first two chapters provide an overview of population studies, contemporary demographic patterns, and general theoretical perspectives. One aspect of the book that I particularly appreciated is that Carter introduces population pyramids very early on. I have found population pyramids to be an intuitive way for students to appreciate the utility of demographic data and visualize the impacts of population change. To encourage their classes to engage with demographic data early in the course, instructors could assign an activity that requires students to compare population pyramids for different countries or regions in varying times periods (past and projected future). Students can do this easily by going to the U.S. Census Bureau website, where they can view animated population pyramids for any country or region in the world (U.S. Bureau of the Census 2017).

After covering the first two chapters, students will have a good sense of classic and social demography, standard theoretical perspectives used in demography (demographic transition theory, Malthusian and neo-Malthusian perspectives, and conflict theory), and a variety of population data sources. They will have an understanding of historical world population growth, the first and second demographic transitions, and aspects of contemporary population distribution. In these first two chapters, Carter directs readers to a wide variety of resources, including websites where they can calculate their own global footprints, the entertaining and informative videos of Hans Rosling, and many more excellent possibilities.

The final three chapters provide depth and detail on the fundamental population processes of mortality, fertility, and migration. Again, Carter’s straightforward cataloging of concepts, measures, explanations, and consequences will be accessible to those just learning demography. Math-phobic students may balk at the sections on measuring fertility, mortality, and migration, but Carter provides many tables and figures so that students can easily see how these measures are used and why they are important. With instructor guidance, students will also be able to see their own demographic behaviors—having children, migrating, and eventually dying—as contributing to patterns that have social causes and social consequences. The personalization of the data in this way may also encourage students to tackle the measures themselves.

Carter follows a similar formula in each chapter. He begins with a relevant quote or two, italicizes important concepts, explores demographic patterns and explanations, describes the calculation of standard demographic measures, and typically discusses policy and potential futures. Each chapter ends with a list of main points and key terms as well a list of useful review questions that often push students to think critically about the content of the chapter. An important strength of the book is that Carter’s suggested readings and online sources go well beyond the standard lists provided in textbooks. Carter provides excellent summaries of books, articles, videos, and sources of data, often with an impressive amount of detail. For instructors planning to use this book as a core text supplemented by additional readings and online information, these sections will be invaluable.

Chapter three on mortality provides a good illustration of the design of the chapters, the context provided for the measurement formulas, and the utility of the end-of-chapter material. It also provides a good illustration of how instructors can use the text to encourage students to see their own lives in demographic context. Carter begins the chapter with a quotation noting that it has only been a few generations since infectious diseases were a threat to people of all ages, whereas today, the expectation of living to a relatively old age is largely a given. Students reading this will immediately be able to see their own probable demographic future in historical context. After covering basic measures of mortality, Carter provides a life table that allows students to look up their own life expectancy based on their age, sex, race, and Hispanic origin. To move beyond this basic calculation, Carter provides a link in the suggested sources to an online life expectancy calculator that takes lifestyle and other factors into account to give students a more accurate estimate of their own life expectancy. By combining their results with Carter’s coverage of explanations for variation in death rates, students will be able to better understand the social factors affecting life expectancy (including their own). Since Carter covers the U.N. Millennium Development Goals in this chapter, students will also be able to compare their own potential longevity with the progress being made on this measure across the globe. Finally, when students get to the review questions at the end of the chapter, they will find a question about why the United States lags behind many of its peer nations in terms of infant mortality and life expectancy. The answer to this question provides additional context for their own life expectancy results, setting up the potential for a classroom discussion of where the United States is doing well in demographic terms and where there is a need for improvement.

While the content of the book is very good, there are some weaknesses in the organization. At first glance, Population and Society seems to be missing key aspects of social demography that are covered in standard texts. For instance, Carter does not include separate chapters on morbidity and health, population aging, family demography, urbanization, or population policy. Such topics are instead folded into the chapters on fertility, mortality, and migration. This integration may help students see how these topics are related to the basic demographic processes, but it also makes for long chapters (averaging about 50 pages), and there is a risk that important topics will be given less attention than they deserve if instructors do not plan carefully.

This is not a book that lends itself to a quickly developed syllabus covering one chapter per week, with the details to be worked out as the semester progresses. Instead, instructors would do well to use the list of main points at the end of each chapter to develop their course schedule and then plan their supplemental readings, videos, and activities based on Carter’s excellent descriptions of supplementary readings and online sources.

A second organizational weakness is the lack of a concluding chapter that revisits the argument about the sociological imagination and the power of social demography, which would have brought the book full circle. Instructors may want to review the four-page introduction again at the end of the course, encourage students to discuss concrete ways that Carter supported his argument, and perhaps develop a final exam question along these lines.

Despite these critiques, I believe that instructors of courses in social demography, especially at the undergraduate level, will find Population and Society useful because it provides students with an excellent overview of the basics and builds a strong foundation for students’ own demographic research using data available from websites like the U.S. Census Bureau and the Population Reference Bureau. One research possibility is a semester-long project in which students conduct demographic analyses for the county where they live (Parks 2012). Another idea would require students to choose a country or region as the subject of a full demographic analysis, perhaps culminating in individual or group presentations that together provide a brief demographic tour of the world (Osgood 2010). With Carter’s book as a foundation, students coming out of courses that also ask them to apply demographic concepts to their own lives and a demographic analysis of a county, country, or region will almost certainly come to appreciate the power of social demography.

References

Osgood, Aurea. 2010. “Final (Group) Project.” Assignment published in TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology. Originally published 2007 in Demography Teaching Resources Guide, edited by D. Payne, L. Bass, and R. A. Nees. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Retrieved April 6, 2018 (http://trails .asanet.org).

Parks, Kathrin A. 2012 “County Demographic Profile.” Assignment published in TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association. Retrieved April 6, 2018

(http://trails.asanet.org).

U.S. Bureau of the Census. 2017. “Information Gateway—International Programs.” Retrieved April 6, 2018 (https://www.census.gov/data-tools/demo/idb/ informationGateway.php).

--Teaching Sociology (July 2018, vol. 46, no. 3, pp. 275-277)

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American Library Association Review:

This primer aims to introduce readers to demography and showcase how such study can help us understand many sociological phenomena whose rationales are routinely understood to arise in the nebulous domain of culture or politics, or, god forbid, economics. The book is well written and with a non-specialist in mind, one more interested in getting quickly to the main points of consensus about human populations instead of the academic quibbles underlying that consensus. The book is peppered with many thought-provoking questions, such as, why did the women’s movement start in the US only after the second World War; why does child marriage persist; why did China install a one-child policy; and so on. In each instance, the author tries to build a sociodemographic explanation underlying these phenomena. Missing are alternative explanations and any attempt to help us understand why one explanation is better than another, an endeavor economists have taken up with some passion. There is scant discussion of how much population is too much. The rise of fertility control and abortion is also largely sidestepped. Overall, this is an engaging read, non-technical in style, best suited for undergraduates and general audiences who are worried about the carrying capacity of our planet.

Summing Up: Recommended. General readers, lower- and upper-division undergraduates.

Reviewer: J. Bhattacharya, Iowa State University

Recommendation: Recommended

Readership Level: General Readers, Lower-division Undergraduates, Upper-division Undergraduates, Two-Year Technical Program Students

--Choice (Oct. 2016, vol. 54, no. 2; Choice Review #: 54-0776)