Belonging and control in population history

Along with the socio-economic and political crises encountered by the people, a recent and rather disturbing event has been the stalling of fertility decline in the North-eastern Region of India (NER). NER comprising of eight states- Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura- is often perceived as an ethnically and culturally distinct component of the Indian subcontinent. Changes in the socio-cultural moorings of the tribes of India have been quite well documented and its repercussion on reproductive decision-making has been commented on. However, the much needed research on the effect of these changes on the fertility behaviour in the context of NER is pitifully rare, a gap which the proposed paper fills in. Perhaps even more interestingly (and importantly), this research attempts to illustrate how the seeds of recent demographic development might have indeed been sown in the past. Results from the statistical analysis of available data (ordinary least squares regression and panel data models have been employed) support the hypothesis of changing socio-cultural norms among tribes and protracted social and political turmoil in the region as possible factors behind the lagging demographic regime of NER.

Brahmaputra valley is a multi-ethnic region with rich culture-traditions and a complex history. Apart from agriculture, crafting is also considered as an important traditional means of livelihood of its inhabitants. The Moria community of Assam is the traditional brass artisans who came to Assam during Muslim invasion as a warrior and later they became canon and gun makers during Ahom regime. According to Assam history, these people were originally warriors; who accompanied the Muhammedan General Turbak in the invasion of Assam. In 1532 AD, the Muslim invaders were repulsed by the Ahoms and their General Turbaq was killed and captured 900 Muslim soldiers. The Muhammadans who were taken as prisoners in this war were became brass item manufactures their livelihood. The Morias are a backward community since they don’t know cultivation beside brass manufacturing which has less demand today. Therefore, brass items manufacturing became economically unproductive to Morias and thus most of them shifted their activities to tertiary sectors for a better economic prospects and better livelihood.
In this paper an attempt has been made to explain the traditional livelihood system and subsequent changes.

India is one of the highest crime rates in the world and women are prime victim of it. Traditionally, women are having lower autonomy in the society which led to even lower importance and reporting of crimes against women in India. This study re-assessed the nature, pattern, and levels of crime against women in India and its distribution; explored the factors contributing to it. Results revealed that over the period all crime rates in India are increasing. The bulk of crime against women is contributing from hurt, molestation and domestic violence. However, kidnapping and murder substantially high. The state level figures revealed that Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh the metro cities of these states are with high prevalence of crime against women. Among the predictors of all crime against women Alcohol consumption, log of GDP and poverty are the key predictor’s emerging from this study.

This paper intends to shed light on the underestimated impact of population concerns on the ways in which historians and social scientits grasped the contours of modern Turkish historiography. The rapid social and political change during the time of Turkey’s foundational era in the 1920s, population concerns stood at the forefront of the new regime. The “disappearence” of the non-Muslim populations and a huge loss of Muslim populations during the troubled times of the Balkan Wars, World War I and the War of Indepence made it all the more necessity for the Turkish Republic to tackle the question of population in a serious way. Indeed, after such a demographic earthquake, the elites the new regime started a campaign of “more population” and devised spectacular ways to increase the population of the country. Birth control and abortion were outlawed together with incentives to those who had six or more children such as exemptions from the infamous Road Tax. In fact, many of the current issues such as nationalist discourse, strong state and many more can never be fully comprehended without taking into account the urgent necessity to populate the country. At the time, “quantity” rather than “quality” of the population mattered and many of the state social policies were based on this necessity. That most historians explain such polici

Emile Durkheim’s scientific study on suicide (1897) is considered the pioneering work on the epidemiological impact of religion, a topic which then became the subject of intense inquiry in the West, before, during and after the epidemiologic transition. In developing countries in general, there is a dearth of scientific studies on the matter, even though the influence of religion may be more greater due the generally low levels of education among the population. Reluctance to vaccinate based on religious grounds, for example, have been reported in northern Nigeria where in 2003, Muslim leaders called on parents to refuse to vaccinate children against polio, on the grounds that the vaccine may contain HIV or cause infertility (Jegede, 2007). Such ideological barriers stand in the way of the Expanded Programme on Immunization’s goal to vaccinate all children, and of consequently achieving the fourth MDG (to reduce under 5 mortality by two thirds between 1990 and 2015). In order to improve the effectiveness of immunization programs, it is important to measure disparities in childhood immunization and understand the causes of these disparities. Using data collected in a Demographic and Health Surveillance System, this paper aim to examine the religious differences in child vaccination in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

Globally there has been an increase in the prevalence of obesity over the last two decades and low and middle-income countries in particular are being threatened with rising levels of obesity. Research on obesity in developing countries has focused mostly on rural urban differences without necessarily explaining the salient factors that account for these differences. This paper examines the likely regional socioeconomic and socio-cultural factors that explain the differences in obesity prevalence across Ghana. The study draws on data from two nationally representative surveys; the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health and the 2005-2006 Ghana Living Standards Survey. The results show marked regional variations in socio-economic status and obesity levels. The Greater Accra region which had the most number of households (45.9%) belonging to the highest wealth quintile was also the most urbanized region (90% urban). Greater Accra also recorded the highest prevalence of obesity (19.3%) while the three northern regions which were the least urbanized and had the lowest number of households in the highest wealth quintile had obesity prevalence of less than 5%. These variations in socio-economic status and obesity levels demonstrate that there is more to the problem of obesity in Ghana than just rural urban differences.

Motherhood and reproduction have been at the core of feminist discourses about women's rights ever since its onset. For the first and second feminist movements, the right to abortion and the public recognition of motherhood have been main issues in reproduction discourses. Since the last two decades of the 20th century, the potentials of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have opened up new venues of feminist discourse.
In this paper we sketch the main feminist lines of argumentation regarding motherhood and assisted reproduction since the 1970s, and we identify specific shifts in their recurrent issues. An essential contribution of feminism to the understanding of motherhood has been its insistence on the distinction between biological and social motherhood. ART has further decomposed biological motherhood and has altered the meaning of motherhood and reproduction. It has also shifted the focus from “quantum” (the number of children) to “timing” (when to have the wanted number of children). Despite the rhetoric of choice surrounding ART, it has not increased women’s reproductive freedom. The decomposition of biological motherhood, the medical, legal, and commercial development of reproduction, and the change in the social perception of motherhood have rather established new forms of control over female reproduction.

Identifying the aspects that individuals value in a romantic partner has been the focus of extensive multidisciplinary research during the last decades. Numerous studies address the differences between men and women in terms of the criteria employed when searching for a suitable partner. The most cited theoretical viewpoint in this respect is evolutionary psychology, which proposes that there are certain differences between men and women in their choice for a good match. While men focus on physical appeal, women tend to be more concerned with partner’s social status and resources. However, the evolutionary approach is problematic to extend to homosexuals’ mating choices as same-sex couples more than often deviate from traditional models of marriage and childbearing. Moreover, the mate selection criteria of gays and lesbians have rarely been studied across different cultural and societal contexts. The aim of this study is to extend existing research on mating preferences of gay and lesbian daters while taking into account cross-national variations in gender role ideology, legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, and social disapproval of homosexuality, across 11 countries in Europe.

This paper describes the world’s major religious populations in 2010. We provide new population estimates for eight religious groups: Christians, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, Buddhists, members of folk or traditional religions, Jews and other world religions. We are the first to reveal median age data for each religion. These results are the product of a multi-year, international collaboration to evaluate and standardize data from thousands of sources to produce the best available social scientific estimates of religious populations in 232 countries and territories of the world.

It is quite natural to see minorities where people are gathered to live. North Korea is no exception. Nevertheless, the North Korean government emphasizes that in North Korea where there is “nothing to envy in the world”, no one is discriminated unless one is “an enemy who cannot live under the sky (heaven)”. But is it?
This paper aims to classify the types of minorities within North Korea and look at their living conditions. The basic materials used in proceeding the research are interviews of the North Korean defectors since September 2010 to the present and publication materials issued by the North Korean government.
There are various types of minorities in North Korea. But this article is going to review some major types of minorties in North Korea and how they are make their everyday lives. Those types are as follows: Persons with no value, those disabled, Repatriated Korean residents from Japan and the outsiders.
By reviewing the types of minorities and their living conditions there, this article aims to understand the internal structure of social class within North Korea.