Sociology
of Fertility
Sociology
451/557
Fall
2001
Instructor: Prof. Amy Kaler
Mondays 14.00-16.50
Tory 6-4
Office hours: Mondays 13.00 to 14.00 or by appointment
In this course, we will examine human fertility as a socially
situated phenomenon, emphasizing the ways in which history, tradition,
technology, politics and economics affect people’s ideas and actions concerning
having (or not having) children; and how people carve out their own life
courses and fertility choices despite these constraints. This course is meant
to complement the department’s existing courses in demography and population
studies, and to introduce students to the great body of work which has emerged
at the intersection of demography and the other social sciences, including
anthropology, history and sociology. The prerequisite for this course is
successful completion of Sociology 251 or another course in population, or
permission from me to enroll.
Unlike many population studies courses, the main work of this course
will be reading books, rather than articles. I’ve made this choice for two
reasons – to give students a chance to appreciate complex arguments about
fertility and culture, drawn out over extensive evidence and argumentation, and
also to expose students to what social scientists do best: write accessible,
intriguing, empirically grounded accounts of how we experience the social world
around us.
This course will take the form of a seminar, rather than a lecture-driven course. You should be aware that this course will require a lot of reading. If you don’t make a valiant effort to keep up with the reading, you will find that class sessions are tedious and hard to follow. I’ve chosen readings which I personally think are thought-provoking and important, so you won’t be asked to read anything which I don’t think is worthwhile. You should take brief notes while reading so that you can refer to them during discussions. I will prepare some remarks on each text, pointing out some of the most important contributions and limitations of the text, which I will use at various points during class, but I expect that the bulk of each class will consist of you talking and engaging with each other about the issues raised in the text, rather than me lecturing. Each text will be introduced by a pair or trio of students with a talking points presentation (see below).
I would like this class to be a place in which students are enabled and expected to express themselves on controversial issues, to engage intellectually with other students, to assess critically what “experts” have to say. This is a course for people who have ideas, want to share them, and want to get more ideas. However, bear in mind that many of the topics that will come up in this course are controversial or have strong emotional connotations, and try to keep your comments respectful and constructive. Along the same line, no beepers or cellphones in class, please, and if you must eat or drink during class, please do so quietly.
Students who require accommodations in this class due to a disability
affecting mobility, vision, hearing, learning or mental or physical health must
contact Specialized Support and Disability Services, 2-8000 Students’ Union
Building, 492-3381 or 492-7269 (TTY) to discuss their needs. The Code of
Student Behaviour is in effect for this course, as for all other U of A
courses. You are advised to familiarize yourself with the code, available on
the web at www.ualberta.ca/~unisecr.appeals.htm.
Texts:
We will read six books for this course. The texts can be found in two
places – the SUB bookstore and on reserve in library. The required texts, with
one exception, can all be purchased in SUB:
Gail Kligman, (1998) The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania
Kristin Luker (1996) Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of
Teenage Pregnancy
Elaine Tyler May (1997) Barren in the Promised Land:
Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness
Rosalind Petcheskey and Karen Judd (1998) Negotiating
Reproductive Rights: Women’s Perspectives Across Countries and Cultures
Elizabeth Siegal Watkins (1999) On the Pill: A Social
History of Oral Contraception 1950-1970
The exception is John R Gillis, Louise A Tilly and David Levine (eds.) (1992) The European Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850-1970: The Quiet Revolution, which is out of print. Copies of this book will be available on reserve in the Sociology Information Center.
Evaluation:
Marking and grading follow the guidelines of the General Faculties
Council of the University of Alberta. No adjustment of marks will be possible
beyond the marks that you earn according to the schedule below. No incompletes
will be given for this course except in the case of serious illness (supported with medical notes) or dire personal emergencies. I am willing to re-evaluate
papers or other written work at students’ request, but you should be aware that
a re-evaluation could result in a lower mark rather than a higher one. I am not
willing to re-evaluate participation marks. I am also not willing to allow
students to do extra work in order to raise their grade.
Evaluation for this course will be based on a) writing a research paper, b) taking charge of presenting one week’s worth of readings for the class, and c) participating actively in class discussions and on the class email discussion board. Marks will be allotted as follows:
Research paper: 50%
Presentation of readings: 25%
Participation: 25%
Conversion of percentages to grades
|
% |
Grade |
|
93-100 |
9 |
|
85-92 |
8 |
|
77-84 |
7 |
|
69-76 |
6 |
|
61-68 |
5 |
|
50-60 |
4 |
|
43-49 |
3 |
|
35-42 |
2 |
|
0-34 |
1 |
Research paper
50% of your mark for this course will come from a research
paper on a topic of your choice. You may write about any issue related to
fertility as a socially situated phenomenon. You may write from any
disciplinary or professional perspective – medical, policy, cultural,
psychological, clinical, etc. Your paper should be 15-20 pages long (or longer,
if necessary for the topic you choose), and you should hand in a ˝ -1 page
proposal for your paper by the fourth week of class. In the sixth and seventh weeks of class, I will ask everyone to give a
short and informal description of what they are working on.
For this research paper, you should come up with a research question which can be answered using the resources available to you in the libraries here or elsewhere. Examples of research paper questions might include
In your paper, you will need to:
Your paper will be evaluated according to how well it fulfills the five functions above, and according to the effort which appears to have gone into it and how smoothly it reads. You are welcome – in fact, you are strongly encouraged – to show me outlines or drafts of your paper in advance, if you would like some early feedback. However, I won’t read drafts in the week immediately preceding the hand-in date.
I will distribute notes adapted from the American Psychological Association Style Guide to show you the customary way of making references and writing a bibliography in the social sciences.
25% of your mark will come from analysis and presentation of courses readings. Each assigned text is given two class periods. You, the students, will be responsible for introducing the readings during the first class period assigned to the text (in other words, every other week class will begin with student presentations). Depending on final class enrollment, I will decide whether each student will present once or twice, and will hand around a sign-up sheet on the first day of class so you can sign up for texts. Each topic will have two or three presenters, depending on enrollment.
As a presenter, your responsibility is not to summarize all the readings, but to get discussion going. To this end, you should collectively prepare three to five pages of “talking points”. These talking points consist of a) point-form notes which the three of you agree are the most important conclusions of the readings, plus b) questions that you want to throw open for discussion. You don’t need to use sentence or paragraph form for a), and you should come up with as many thought-provoking questions as you can under b). On the first scheduled day for the topic, you’ll take about 15-20 minutes at the beginning of the class to briefly say what you found most important in the readings, then we’ll open it up to everyone to comment on your talking points and respond to your questions. The three people presenting will be responsible for moderating the discussion, making sure everyone has their say and so forth – I will jump in only if absolutely necessary. (The first presentation will be in the third week rather than the second, to allow the first team of students time to prepare)
If you’d like, you can also bring in other materials – newspaper clippings, dramatizations, fiction, videos, even guest speakers, if you can find some! Anything that you think will be both informative and thought-provoking will be fine with me (within reason!). However, you don’t have to do anything other than prepare talking points and lead the discussion. You should get me your talking points before the class, and I will make copies for everyone. 25% of your mark will be based on your presentation. I will assign the same mark to the whole group. You will be assessed on
· preparedness
· originality
· knowledge of the text
· quality of criticisms of the text
· and how well you engaged the rest of the class with your talking points and your discussion.
I have attached a short example of a talking points paper to this syllabus to give you an idea of what it might look like.
25% of your mark will come from your participation. I will keep track of the quality as well as the quantity of students’ input into the class. Participation will most often take the form of being active and enthusiastic in class discussions, through posing questions to other students, responding to other people’s questions, bringing in items that are related to the text of the week, and participating on the class email listserv. This listserv will enable students to continue talking and debating outside of class time, and all enrolled in the course will be signed up for it. If you’re anxious about speaking up in class, or if you want to formulate a complicated thought and formulating it takes some time, the listserv is the place. I expect all students to contribute some brilliant, insightful, creative thoughts to the listserv at least five times during the semester, and to make their first contribution before the end of the second week. If you don’t have anything brilliant or insightful to say on a particular day, please feel free to contribute anyway.
The email discussion list for this course has been created using WebCT. When you register, you are automatically signed up for this discussion list and will receive messages from it on your U of A email account. In order to take part in the discussion, you must go to http://www.ualberta.ca/WEBCT/arts/index.html on the Web. Scroll down the alphabetical list of courses until you see this course. Then click on the course number and enter your username and password when prompted. This will get you into the main page for this course. Click on the “discussion” icon, and you’re in, then on the icon for the forum marked “Main”. If you click on “show unread”, you can see all the new messages which have been posted since you last checked in, or you can click “show all” and see all the messages from the beginning of the term. You can reply to messages in the “Main” forum or post your own new messages, just like in an email system. I will go over use of the discussion list on the first day of class. Your contribution to the listserv can take many forms:
I encourage you to post early and post often. Discussion lists can have a very different “vibe” than in-class discussions, and the two can bounce back and forth and complement each other well. However, be aware that anyone who in my opinion creates a threatening or unpleasant environment for other students will be removed from the list and will lose this portion of his or her grade.
Course Schedule
Week 1: Introduction: Frameworks for analysis and questions to answer about fertility. New directions in the study of fertility, readings to be made available in class
Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp (1991) The Politics of Reproduction. In Annual Review of Anthropology 20:311-343
Susan McDaniel (1996) Toward a Synthesis of Feminist and Demographic Perspective on Fertility. In The Sociological Quarterly 37:83-104
Susan Greenhalgh (1990) Towards a Political Economy of Fertility: Anthropological Contributions. In Population and Development Review 85-105
E. A. Hammel (1990) A Theory of Culture for Demography. In Population and Development Review, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Sep., 1990), pp. 455-485.
Week 2: Meanings of fertility and childlessness:
Begin Elaine Tyler May (1997) Barren in the Promised Land: Childless
Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness
Recommended *: Excerpt from Marcia Inhorn (1996) Infertility and
Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Europe
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Week 3: Meanings of fertility and childlessness:
Finish Elaine Tyler May (1997) Barren in the Promised Land: Childless
Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness
Week 4: *** Hand in paper proposal *** Fertility as a social problem: Begin
Kristin Luker (1996) Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy
Recommended:
Rickie Solinger and Elaine Tyler May (2000) Wake Up Little Susie: Single
Pregnancy and Race Before Roe vs Wade
Week 5: Fertility as a social problem: Finish Kristin Luker (1996) Dubious
Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy
Week 6: Fertility as a political issue: Begin Gail Kligman, (1998) The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania
Recommended: Excerpt from Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg (1999) Plundered Kitchens, Empty Wombs : Threatened Reproduction and Identity in the Cameroon Grassfields. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Week 7: Fertility as a political issue: Finish Gail Kligman, (1998) The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania
Week 8: Gender and the social control of fertility:
Begin Rosalind Petcheskey and Karen Judd (1998) Negotiating Reproductive
Rights: Women’s Perspectives Across Countries and Cultures
Recommended: Amy Kaler (1998) Who Has Told You To Do This Thing? Toward a Feminist Interpretation of Contraceptive Diffusion in Rhodesia 1970-1980. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 25:3
Week 9: Gender and the social control of fertility:
Finish Rosalind Petcheskey and Karen Judd (1998) Negotiating Reproductive
Rights: Women’s Perspectives Across Countries and Cultures
Week 10: The medical management of fertility:
Elizabeth Siegal Watkins (1999) On the Pill: A Social History of Oral
Contraception 1950-1970
Recommended: Hardon, Anita (1997) Contesting Claims on the Safety and Acceptability of Anti-Fertility Vaccines. Reproductive Health Matters 10, pp.68-81
Week 11: Large-scale fertility change: Begin John R
Gillis, Louise A Tilly and David Levine (eds.) (1992) The European
Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850-1970: The Quiet Revolution
Recommended: Charles Hirschman (1994) Why Fertility Changes, Annual Review of Sociology 1994:20, 203-235
Week 3: Large-scale fertility decline: Finish John R
Gillis, Louise A Tilly and David Levine (eds.) (1992) The European
Experience of Declining Fertility, 1850-1970: The Quiet Revolution
Week 13: Course Wrap-up - revisiting the articles from the first class in light of what we’ve read.
* Recommended readings are exactly what the name implies – not required, but suggested if you want to learn more about the topic. The recommended readings present a slightly different view on the issue at hand, presenting information from another culture or a different theoretical perspective. The recommended readings are available on reserve in the Sociology Information Centre.
Sample paper:
Talking Points (this is a very short example, yours should be longer):
Susan Sontag, “AIDS and its Metaphors”
-medical language is full of metaphors – e.g. “harmony” of bodily organs (from music) or military metaphors for “fighting” disease
-we understand illnesses in terms of the metaphors we apply to them – but the use of these metaphors can lead to negative consequences, e.g. cancer as consequence of repressed emotions can lead to blaming the victim
-AIDS has replaced cancer as the disease which attracts the most metaphors, especially as inevitable retribution for wrongdoing – AIDS is disease of shame
-shame is enhanced by fact that AIDS is often visible on the body, unlike other diseases like cancer or heart disease
-main metaphor of AIDS is “plague”, in sense of wrath of God, sign of social breakdown and sin
-literary and historical uses of plague
-plagues historically thought of as punishment for whole community
-plagues come from “somewhere else” – foreigners blamed
-religious and political leaders describe AIDS as plague resulting from decadence and immorality (homosexuality)
-describe AIDS as plague carried by “outsiders”, Africans or Haitians, enemies of
“moral” society
-AIDS itself changes the way people think about human contact like sex: leads to fear about, even about forms of human contact which don’t transmit the virus – AIDS creates psychological isolation even among those who don’t have it
-AIDS has changed culture of “recreational, risk-free sexuality”
-no one knows (as of 1989) how far AIDS will spread – this uncertainty spreads paranoia among privileged about whether AIDS might spread to them and feeds catastrophic imagination about the future