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6 - Social institutions and demographic regimes in non-industrial societies: a comparative approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2009

By
Richard Smith
Edited by
Helen Macbeth  and
Paul Collinson
Richard Smith
Affiliation:
Cambridge Group for the History of Population, Sir William Hardy Building, Department of Geography, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN, U.K.
Helen Macbeth
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University
Paul Collinson
Affiliation:
Oxford Brookes University
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Summary

In most non-industrial societies the key social institution determining the character of the demographic regime is the family or kinship system. In studying such an influence on the demographic characteristics of agrarian societies of the past or the present, historians of the family, social anthropologists and sociologists have frequently been badly served by the quality of the demographic data available. The collection of vital records is frequently a development that emerges once a society is well advanced on the path of economic development. Historical demography has therefore attracted the attention of students of demographic systems in non-industrial societies working in a variety of disciplines, since it has forged a methodology that has generated high quality data using the records of ecclesiastical parishes.

As a sub-discipline of the social sciences, historical demography has generated findings disproportionately from past European societies, since its methodology has been heavily dependent upon exploitation of a particular class of records relating to the registration of baptisms, marriages and burials by the parochial clergy of the Christian Church – a practice that was widely pursued from the sixteenth century (Mols 1954). Historical demography has also been able to assemble evidence from those parts of the world which were colonised by Europeans who carried with them registration practices that had long characterised their homelands. Investigations of past demographic conditions in areas that were not so completely colonised by Europeans are more restricted in scope, dependent on use of different types of evidence or on the registrations of events made by missionaries for those sections of societies that were subsequently Christianised.

Type
Chapter
Information
Human Population Dynamics
Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
 , pp. 103 - 123
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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