A pioneering work in comparative history and social science that compares population behavior in response to adversity in Europe and Asia.
This highly original book―the first in a series analyzing historical population behavior in Europe and Asia―pioneers a new approach to the comparative analysis of societies in the past. Using techniques of event history analysis, the authors examine 100,000 life histories in 100 rural communities in Western Europe and Asia to analyze the demographic response to social and economic pressures. In doing so they challenge the accepted Eurocentric Malthusian view of population processes and demonstrate that population behavior has not been as uniform as previously thought―that it has often been determined by human agency, particularly social structure and cultural practice.
The authors examine the complex relationship between human behavior and social and economic environment, analyzing age, gender, family, kinship, social class and social organization, climate, food prices, and real wages to compare mortality responses to adversity. Their research at the individual, household, and community levels challenges the previously accepted characterizations of social and economic behavior in Europe and Asia in the past. The originality of the analysis as well as the geographic breadth and historical depth of the data make Life Under Pressure a significant advance in the field of historical demography. Its findings will be of interest to scholars in economics, environmental studies, demography, history, and sociology as well as the general reader interested in these subjects.

Life under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standards in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900 (Eurasian Population and Family History)

Business & Money

LEE, James Z.

Bengtsson, Tommy

Campbell, Cameron

Economics

The MIT Press

Fate and Fortune in Rural China is a major contribution to the study of both the social and population history of late traditional China, and that of historical demography in general. Lee and Campbell demonstrate the interaction between demographic and other social pressures, and illustrate graphically the nature of social mobility and social organization in rural China during the century from 1774SH1873. Their conclusion--that social norms, rooted in ideology, determined demographic performance--is supported by a mass of hitherto inaccessible primary data.

Fate and Fortune in Rural China: Social Organization and Population Behavior in Liaoning 1774–1873 (Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time, Series Number 31)

Campbell, Cameron D.

Arts & Photography

Cambridge University Press

Fate and Fortune in Rural China is a major contribution to the study of both the social and population history of late traditional China, and that of historical demography in general. Lee and Campbell demonstrate the interaction between demographic and other social pressures, and illustrate graphically the nature of social mobility and social organization in rural China during the century from 1774SH1873. Their conclusion--that social norms, rooted in ideology, determined demographic performance--is supported by a mass of hitherto inaccessible primary data.

This book presents evidence about historical and contemporary Chinese population behavior that overturns much of the received wisdom about the differences between China and the West first voiced by Malthus. Malthus described a China in which early and universal marriage ensured high fertility and therefore high mortality. He contrasted this with Western Europe, where marriage occurred late and was far from universal, resulting in lower fertility and higher demographic responsiveness to economic circumstances. The result in China was thought to be mass misery as part of the population teetered on the brink of a Malthusian precipice, whereas in the West conditions were less severe.
In reality, James Lee and Wang Feng argue, there has been effective regulation of population growth in China through a variety of practices that depressed marital fertility to levels far below European standards, and through the widespread practices of infanticide and abortion. Moreover, in China, population behavior has long been primarily a consequence of collective intervention. This collective culture underlies four distinctive features of the Chinese demographic pattern--high rates of female infanticide, low rates of male marriage, low rates of marital fertility, and high rates of adoption--that Lee and Wang trace from 1700 to today. These and other distinctive features of the Chinese demographic and social system, they argue, led to a different demographic transition in China from the one that took place in the West.

One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700–2000

History

Feng, Wang

Asia

Harvard University Press

<div>The Qing state, driven by Confucian precepts of good government and urgent practical needs, committed vast resources to its granaries. Nourish the People traces the basic practices of this system, analyzes the organizational bases of its successes and failures, and examines variant practices in different regions. The volume concludes with an assessment of the granary system's social and economic impact and historical comparison with the food supply policies of other states.</div>

Nourish the People: The State Civilian Granary System in China, 1650-1850 (Michigan Monographs in Chinese Studies)

Will, Pierre-Étienne

Wong, Bin R.

Wong, Roy Bin

International

Univ of Michigan Center for chinese

Population chinoise (La): mythes et réalités

Science & Math

WANG, Feng

Essays & Commentary

PU MONTREAL

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Books by LEE, James Z.