Susan Greenhalgh

Sexual Stratification: The Other Side of "Growth with Equity" in East Asia

This paper explores changes in womens status in postwar Taiwan with a focus on the perpetuation and even intensification of the traditional system of sexual stratification with rapid economic development. Using data primarily from northern Taiwan trends in inequality between sons and daughters in the 1960-78 period were examined with respect to 4 socioeconomic resources (education occupation income and property) and 3 areas of personal autonomy ( job selection residence and control of income). The data suggest that the postwar period intensified differences between sons and daughters in Taiwan in personal autonomy and the possession of socioeconomic resources. The central agents in this process were the parents themselves. They often required daughters to leave school early work at low status and poorly paying jobs and send large remittances to their parents. Parents used these remittances to finance higher education for their sons thus securing their own futures. These findings suggest that industrial capitalism has provided new means (education and jobs) for parents to use old tools (sex-differentiated intergenerational contracts) to exacerbate hierarchies based on sexual inequality. It is concluded that policymakers should direct more attention to the importance of womens status. Despite the shortterm benefits the traditional family system has provided for economic development it exerts an upward pressure on fertility and leads to the underutilization of womens labor power.

Toward a Political Economy of Fertility: Anthropological Contributions

THREE DECADES AGO, THERE WAS WIDE CONSENSUS on why fertility falls. Now, however, it seems that the closer we get to understanding specific fertility declines, the further we move from a general theory of fertility transition. In the late 1960s the European Fertility Project began to chip away at the foundations of classical transition theory-that part-theory, part-explanation which embodied the collective wisdom of the 1950s and 1960s (Notestein, 1953; Davis, 1963; for the critique, see Coale, 1969, 1973). Using aggregate-level historical data from over 700 European districts, demographers collaborating on the Princeton-based project found that in many parts of the continent the pattern of demographic change failed to follow the threestage path enshrined in demographic transition theory. In the critical transitional stage, fertility decline actually preceded mortality decline in some localities. The project also established that fertility decline occurred at varying levels of socioeconomic and demographic development, undercutting the central tenet of transition theory (Knodel and van de Walle, 1979; Watkins, 1986). The most recent blow to received wisdom comes in a new study of fertility decline in northern Italy (Kertzer and Hogan, 1989). Drawing on a wealth of individual-level historical data from the town of Casalecchio, David Kertzer, an anthropologist, and Dennis Hogan, a sociologist, show that macrolevel social and economic changes affected members of different classes living in the same community differently. In Casalecchio there occurred not one, but four, temporally discontinuous fertility transitions, a finding that challenges the image fostered by the European Project of whole regions undergoing demographic transition together. Kertzer and Hogan corroborate the European Projects finding that fertility decline does not follow changes

Restraining Population Growth in Three Chinese Villages, 1988-93

Fertility decline during 1988-92 in three villages in the southern fringe of Xianyang City in central Shaanxi province of China is discussed. Decline is attributed to the number of women marrying changes in first and second births and social and political changes. Minister Peng attributes the decline in Chinas fertility to 1.90 children in 1992 to an increased emphasis on birth planning by leaders at all levels and rapid economic development. These changes led to lower birth expectations. The government issued a directive in May 1991 on strict control of population growth. The three villages were initially studied during 1947-88. This study focuses on the economic and demographic changes and policy changes occurring during 1988-92. Shaanxi province has a mixed record of fertility control. In 1981 the total fertility rate (TFR) was 2.42 or 11% under the national average. In 1989-90 TFR was 2.70 or 20% higher than the national average. In 1988 a new set of solutions were offered for solving the problems of birth planning. In 1991 the policy involved a new responsibility system and greater investment of resources on birth control locally. Village family planning underwent the following changes: fiscal constraints improvement in the political climate firm economic incentives and elimination of some obstacles to contraceptive use. These villages became well-to-do. Average incomes are 800 yuan annually. The crude birth rate in 1990 is reported as 17-18 compared to the provincial level of 23.5. By 1992 the crude birth rate is reported as 14.9. The number of women of reproductive age declined in 1992 to 68.9 from 84-85 in 1989-90. The proportion of second births was halved during 1988-92 to 25% of total births. Third births were eliminated. Sterilization rose from 18.3% to 26.9%. 40% of the decline in fertility is attributed to demographic factors and 60% is explained by program and economic changes. Incomes and rising standards of living were increased due to economic diversification into industry and commerce and to technological advances in agricultural production. The construction of the new highway may have reinforced population education notions about the costs of children. Ideal family size is lower but son preferences remain. The party-state retains strong control over rural production and the means of communication which are crucial in state enforcement of birth control policy.

Slaughter of the Innocents: Coercive Birth Control in China.

This book documents the human suffering caused by Chinas effort to control its population growth. It tells how government policy has encouraged extreme measures, including forced sterilizations and abortions, even when it publicly condemns them. The author offers documentation from Chinese sources. Because of the one-child policy for example, the male-female balance has been threatened, as peasants, fearful of not having a son to support them in old age, kill thier female babies.

Networks and their Nodes: Urban Society on Taiwan

Just below the glass-sheathed surface of Taiwans modern cities, urban life is structured by webs of social ties that may be among the closest knit and farthest flung in the world. Family-centred, these personal networks bind urban residents to one another, to kin in the countryside, and to kin all over the globe, obliterating the neat social distinctions between urban and rural, domestic and foreign. Family networks undergird both the society and the economy of Taiwan. Over the past 35 years Taiwans families have been if not the islands greatest, certainly its least appreciated resource. Family mobility strategies have both speeded development and tempered disparities due to ethnicity, class and spatial location. Yet these same families may be the greatest obstacle to further, capital-inttensive development, for they are insular and atomistic, and their resources are limited and subject to periodic break-up. However, social change is underway that is likely to reduce the size of the family per se, and increase the importance of supra-family kinship networks. Such shifts would have farreaching effects on the society and economy of the island. These are the major themes I shall develop in this short article. After sketching in the history of urban society on Taiwan, I will outline the nature of social and economic organization in, and extending from, Taiwans cities. Using the scanty data available, I shall then discuss the extent of social and economic differentiation among groups of differing ethnic, class and spatial backgrounds. In conclusion, I will set out some of the policy issues that stem from my analysis of urban society. Throughout the thrust is description, not explanation. Because of space limitations I can only hint at some of the theoretical implications of Taiwans urban experience in the footnotes.

The Evolution of the One-child Policy in Shaanxi, 1979–88

A crucial element in Chinas modernization effort is the control of population growth. Months before the historic Third Plenum of the 11th Communist Party Congress in December 1978, the leadership decided that only a drastic limitation of fertility would ensure achievement of its economic goals for the year 2000. The policy to encourage all couples to limit themselves to one child was announced in January 1979. In September 1980 the Party Central Committee took the unusual step of publishing an “Open Letter” announcing a drastic programme of 20 to 30 years’ duration to restrict population growth, and calling on all Party and Youth League members to take the lead in having only one child. Thus was launched the worlds most ambitious family-planning programme.

China's Strategic Demographic Initiative.

Preface Chinas New Demographics The Population Boom The Marital Scene The Reproductive Cadence Population Policy Dynamics The Strategic Demographic Initiative: Theoretical Renovation The Strategic Demographic Initiative: Changed Mission The Dispute within the Consensus Progressions from the One Child Limit Sterilization: Diffusion and Significance Abortion: Incidence and Implications Amid Induced Fertility Transition and Ahead Consequences and Ramifications Costs and Benefits The Limits to Population Planning The Chinese Experience Assessed The Outlook Bibliography Appendix Index

The Chinese biopolitical: facing the twenty-first century

Today the dominant science and technology studies (STS) story about the politics “life itself” sees an epochal shift in which the classic Foucauldian biopolitics of the population has disappeared, giving way to new forms of politics focusing on the management of individual genetic risk. With most STS scholars focusing on the politics of frontier sciences and technologies, especially in the West, the biopolitics of population collectives has received little sustained attention. Based on close study of China, this paper argues that the familiar biopolitical story is Eurocentric, and that on a more inclusive map of the world the politics of population governance remains an essential terrain of the politics of life. In China, the politics of population has been crucial to the development of capitalism and to the nations rise to global prominence. Responding to the challenges of a changing world economy, in the twenty-first century the biopolitics of population is mutating, becoming less econocentric and more focused on social and even human governance. Far from declining, the biopolitics of the population is becoming ever more significant, profoundly changing the way China and its people are governed. The story of biopolitics in the molecular age is more complex and collective than we had thought.

Population and development planning in China

This volume offers insights into the demographic planning process in the worlds most populous country. The population of China is well over 1.1 billion and it could reach 1.7 billion by the year 2025 unless the birth rate is further reduced. Chinese scholars and government officials have long recognized the serious economic, ecological and social problems caused by rapid rates of population growth. The book offers the perspectives of Chinese officials and scholars of the State Planning Commission (SPC) and foreign scholars who collaborated with the SPC in carrying out a project on population and development planning. Their contributions describe some of the pressures building up in the Chinese economy and government prior to the events of 1989, and offer some clues as to the likely course population policy will take in the Peoples Republic of China.

Socialism and Fertility in China

Current figures indicate that Chinas 1990 population is in the area of 1.1 billion, 200 million less than the 1.3 billion predicted in the early 1970s. What will happen to fertility in China in the 1990s? To answer this question this article looks closely at the forces underlying the fertility decline of the 1970s and early 1980s. It argues that the success of the later-longer-fewer policy of the 1970s and of the one-child policy of the 1980s can only be explained by reference to the larger socioeconomic and sociopolitical context in which the policies were carried out. The construction of a socialist society in the first decade of Communist rule restructured social institutions and state-society relations in ways that fundamentally altered both the economics of childbearing, reducing the attractiveness of children to parents, and the politics of fertility decision making, giving parents little choice but to comply with restrictive fertility policies after they were introduced. The direction of fertility change in the 1990s is likely to hinge on developments in rural economic policies, whose future, the past has taught, is hazardous to predict.