Population In The Human Sciences

This title addresses the need for review and assessment of the framework of interdisciplinary population studies. Limitations to prevailing post-war paradigms like the Evolutionary Synthesis and Demographic Transition were becoming evident by the 1970s. Subsequent decades have witnessed an immense expansion of population modelling and related empirical inquiry. The volume presents revised papers of an international symposium marking 40 years of the Human Sciences programme at the University of Oxford.

This title addresses the need for review and assessment of the framework of interdisciplinary population studies. Limitations to prevailing post-war paradigms like the Evolutionary Synthesis and Demographic Transition were becoming evident by the 1970s. Subsequent decades have witnessed an immense expansion of population modelling and related empirical inquiry. The volume presents revised papers of an international symposium marking 40 years of the Human Sciences programme at the University of Oxford.

The Human Sciences address problems in nature and society that often require coordinated approaches of several scientific disciplines and scholarly research, embracing the social and biological sciences, and history. When we wish, for example, to understand how some sub-populations and not others come to be vulnerable, why a disease spreads in one part of a population and not another, or which gene variants are transmitted across generations, then a remarkable range of disciplinary perspectives need to be brought together, from the study of institutional structures, cultural boundaries, and social networks down to the micro-biology of cellular pathways, and gene expression. The need to explain and address differential impacts of pressing contemporary issues like AIDS, ageing, social and economic inequalities, and environmental change, are well-known cases in point. Population concepts, models, and evidence lie at the core of approaches to all of these problems, if only because accurate differentiation and identification of groups, their structures, constituents, and relations between sub-populations, are necessary to specify their nature and extent. The study of population thus draws both on statistical methodologies of demography and population genetics and sustained observation of the ways in which populations and sub-populations are formed, maintained, or broken up in nature, in the laboratory, and in society. In an era in which research needs to operate on multiple levels, population thinking thus provides a common ground for communication and critical thought across disciplines. Population in the Human Sciences addresses the need for review and assessment of the framework of interdisciplinary population studies. Limitations to prevailing postwar paradigms like the Evolutionary Synthesis and Demographic Transition were becoming evident by the 1970s. Subsequent decades have witnessed an immense expansion of population modelling and related empirical inquiry, with new genetic developments that have reshaped evolutionary, population, and developmental biology. The rise of anthropological and historical demography, and social network analysis, are playing major roles in rethinking modern and earlier population history. More recently, the emergence of sub-disciplines like biodemography and evolutionary anthropology, and growing links between evolutionary and developmental biology, indicate a growing convergence of biological and social approaches to population.

The book sees procreation, the forgotten basis of population dynamics, and its macrohistorical results through the lenses of world-system analysis in a nondogmatic way. This interdisciplinary book sheds light on the historical paths leading to the current unprecedented numbers of humans on the globe, fuelled by the capitalist demand for labor and mediated by the role of women in society. Procreation and Population is a critical text, opposing the current disciplinary fences that demonstrably hinder our comprehension of social phenomena. Attentive to gender relations, the book boldly tracks “the big picture” of population dynamics and its most reliable theories in times of postmodernist taboos on generalizations and on the search for the historical laws of human society.

The purpose of this book is to gain a better understanding of the multitude of factors that determine longer life and improved quality of life in the years a person is alive. While the emphasis is primarily on the social and behavioral determinants that have an effect on the health and well-being of individuals, this publication also addresses quality of life factors and determinants more broadly. Each chapter in this book considers an area of investigation and ends with suggestions for future research and implications of current research for policy and practice. The introductory chapter summarizes the state of Americans’ health and well-being in comparison to our international peers and presents background information concerning the limitations of current approaches to improving health and well-being. Following the introduction, there are 21 chapters that examine the effects of various behavioral risk factors on population health, identify trends in life expectancy and quality of life, and suggest avenues for research in the behavioral and social science arenas to address problems affecting the U.S. population and populations in other developed and developing countries around the world. Undergraduate and graduate students pursuing coursework in health statistics, health population demographics, behavioral and social science, and heatlh policy may be interested in this content. Additionally, policymakers, legislators, heatlh educators, and scientific organizations around the world may also have an interest in this resource.

What if we recognized that the human sciences collectively investigate a few dozen key phenomena that interact with each other? Can we imagine a human science that would seek to stitch its understandings of this system of phenomena into a coherent whole? If so, what would that look like? This book argues that we are unlikely to develop one unified "theory of everything." Our collective understanding must then be a "map" of the myriad relationships within this large – but finite and manageable – system, coupled with detailed understandings of each causal link and of important subsystems. The book outlines such a map and shows that the pursuit of coherence – and a more successful human science enterprise – requires integration, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of different methods and theory types, and the pursuit of terminological and presentational clarity. It explores how these inter-connected goals can be achieved in research, teaching, library classification, public policy, and university administration. These suggestions are congruent with, and yet enhance, other projects for reform of the human sciences. This volume is aimed at any scholar or student who seeks to comprehend how what they study fits within a broader understanding.

This book presents the historical background of the development of methodology for the human sciences, in order to provide readers with a context for understanding the present concerns and issues in research methodology.

In human populations, biological, social, spatial, ecological and economic aspects of existence are inextricably linked, demanding a holistic approach to their study. Many undergraduate and postgraduate courses now emphasise the value of studying human populations using theoretical frameworks and methodologies from different traditional disciplines. Human Population Dynamics introduces such frameworks and methodologies whilst demonstrating how changes in human population structure can be addressed from several different academic perspectives. As such, the book contains contributions from world-renowned researchers in demography, social and biological anthropology, genetics, biology, sociology, ecology, history and human geography. In particular, the contributors emphasise the lability of many population structures and boundaries, as viewed from their area of expertise. This text is aimed at undergraduate students, graduates and academic researchers from any academic discipline which considers human populations.