Call for chapters for an edited volume
Deadline for abstracts: 15 September 2014
Provisional title : ‘ Scarce’ Women and ‘Surplus’ Men in Communities of Asia: Macro Demographics versus Local Dynamics
Potential publisher : Springer, series on Demographic transformation and socioeconomic development (see information on series below). The series’ editors are interested in the topic of the volume and are expecting a book proposal.
Volume editors : Danièle Bélanger (Université Laval, Canada), Sharada Srinivasan (University of Guelph, Canada) and Shuzhuo Li (Xi’an Jiaotong University, China)
Nearly a quarter of a century after Amartya Sen’s pioneer essay on the missing women of Asia, China and India’s demographic imbalance between men and women creates growing concerns about the future of ‘scarce women’ and ‘surplus men’ and how the reconfiguration of local and national population structures will affect the future of societies in Asia and beyond. Most accounts paint a bleak picture. Some observers anticipate that ‘scarce women’ will be the object of increased violence, kidnapping, trafficking for forced sex work or forced marriage. Some studies document escalating bride prices and potential for local violence in the competition for wives. In the last few years, academic and media attention has focused on the emergence of ‘surplus men’, a group that will face difficulties getting married and being cared for in old age. Mainland China’s ‘surplus men’, resulting from the past avoidance and elimination of daughters, are estimated to have been approximately 30 million in 2005. Men facing difficult marriage prospects due to female emigration are fewer overall, but their numbers can be significant in localities from which many young women emigrate. Research from security studies singled out ‘surplus men’ as an ‘army of bachelors’ who would represent a safety threat for future world stability. Scenarios predict how ‘sexually’ frustrated single men could bring about massive emigration, a booming sex industry and the spread of HIV or other sexually transmitted diseases. Once in old age, single childless men are likely to face solitude and destitution without a spouse or an adult child to look after them.
The impetus for this edited book lies in the current inadequate understanding of dynamics at work in localities where demographic pyramids are slimmer on the female side, compared to the male side. Some existing accounts – particularly those from security studies- are fraught with unsupported hypotheses, unclear assumptions and sensationalistic accounts. There emerges an urgent need to examine, at ground level, processes that are unfolding in communities. This volume will contribute to the advancement of knowledge by first documenting how families, communities and some groups (i.e. single men, young ‘scarce’ women, parents) adapt and adjust to recent demographic shifts. Second, the chapters will discuss how demographic change interacts with other processes of change, including changes with respect to economic development and globalization, gender, class, caste, families, migration and work. The volume will include case studies conducted by experienced researchers and young scholars (including graduate students) from diverse disciplines in selected communities of India and China.
Chapters should be based on original first-hand data collection or on the analysis of original data. Micro-level analyses contextualized in larger processes of change are particularly sought for this collection. Chapters should push further existing understandings of the consequences of the demographic imbalance between men and women in China and/or India, particularly from a gender/ feminist perspective. We would particularly like to welcome contributions from young/ new researchers working on this topic.
Chapters could be on the following topics:
1. Marriage market dynamics
2. Single men's social behaviour, masculinities and sexuality
3. Women's empowerment, aspirations and 4. Dynamics of mobility and migration, international and internal
5. Gender relations, family relations
6. Daughter deficit and the economy (especially local economies)
7. Discourse analyses of the phenomenon (Media, state actors, NGOs, international organizations)
8. Policy responses
Calendar
July 2014 : Call for chapters
September 15 2014 : Deadline for submitting a 1,500 long abstract (make sure to include information on methodology)
September 30 2014 : Responses to authors
January 01 2015 : Deadline for full draft chapters. All chapters made available to all authors. Each contributor must read all the chapters before the workshop. Each author is invited to prepare a discussion of one of the papers.
Last week of April 2015 : Workshop gathering all authors. Tentative location is the Netherlands. At the workshop, authors do not present their papers since all contributors have already read all the papers. Each paper is discussed by one person and then by the entire group. At the end of the workshop, authors go home with the list of revisions they must make and they have a good knowledge of the entire set of chapters. In doing their revisions, they will be asked to dialogue with and refer to other chapters of the collection (required in edited collections).
July 01 2015 : Revised chapters and introduction, followed by manuscript submission by editors
Send proposals to: scarcity.surplus.gender@gmail.com