A Theory of Culture for Demography

TLDR

Demographers have refined measurement techniques, yet explanations based on universal rationality have faced criticism, leading to a growing interest in cultural context to account for demographic variation. The study proposes that culture explains persistent demographic differences among populations sharing similar economic conditions, suggesting culture as a higher‑level analytic principle.

Abstract

MUCH OF THE INGENUITY EXPENDED BY DEMOGRAPHERS over the last halfcentury has been devoted to refining techniques of measurement, so that variables of interest might be reliably presented for explanation. The task of explanation itself has been less successful. Efforts that have assumed a decontextualized universal rationality and the maximization of scarce and monetizable goods have dominated much of demographic thinking but have encountered increasing opposition (viz. Cleland and Wilson, 1987; Lesthaeghe and Surkyn, 1988; and more broadly Sahlins's 1976 critique of utilitarianism in general). On the other hand, efforts to study demographic behavior in its social and cultural context usually produce only particularistic empirical summaries, and even institutional approaches in the hands of the sociological branch of the demographic fraternity have not reached the universalism so blithely assumed by their economic brethren. ' It is largely in the context of rejection of universalistic economic-demographic theories, and in the search for explanations that would still use general principles to elucidate particular outcomes, that the concept of culture has increasingly been called into play (e.g., Anderson, 1986; Carter, 1988; Clark, 1988; Hammel, 1981, 1985; Hull, 1983; Johansson, 1988; Kreager, 1982, 1986; Levine and Scrimshaw, 1983; Nag, 1972, 1980, 1983; Watkins, 1986, 1987, 1990). Culture, it is claimed, may explain why communities or persons living under apparently identical economic conditions but differing in language or tradition, often behave very differently demographically. Culture may explain why the population of a geographic region or linguistic area continues to behave demographically in much the same way over time, even though economic conditions change. Culture may explain why demographic differentials between populations persist even as the level of some demographic measure for all of them exhibits similar change over time.2 The use of culture as an analytic principle might elevate contextualization to a higher level. Thus, although an explanation grounded in a culture may