"Kingsley Davis (1908-1997) was one of the pioneers in social demography, and was particularly identified with the theory of the demographic transition. This holds that the process of industrialization first causes mortality to decline, leading to a substantial rate of population growth and only later causes fertility to fall, leading eventually to the cessation of population growth. Kingsley Davis is especially remembered for his arresting and forceful critique of family-planning programs intended to achieve zero population growth.Before he devoted his major attention to social demography, Davis had distinguished himself through influential articles on the structure of family and kinship, including the topics of jealousy and sexual property, the sociology of prostitution, and illegitimacy. He had an early interest in structural-functional analysis, which resulted in his famous and controversial article on stratification, co-authored with Wilbert Moore, and his equally famous presidential address to the American Sociological Association in 1959.David Heer's biography of Kingsley Davis is based on material contained in the Kingsley Davis Archive at the Hoover Institution Library at Stanford University, the Kingsley Davis graduate file at Harvard University, the interview of Kingsley Davis by Jean van der Tak in Demographic Destinies (1990), and David Heer's personal relationship with Kingsley Davis. The book also contains thirty of the most important writings by Kingsley Davis. These were chosen, in part, for the number of citations received in the Cumulative Social Science Citation Index, and in part to ensure that readers would be able to assess the continuity of Kingsley Davis's ideas at all stages of his career."

"David Heer's biography of Kingsley Davis is based on material contained in the Kingsley Davis Archive at the Hoover Institution Library at Stanford University, the Kingsley Davis graduate file at Harvard University, the interview of Kingsley Davis by Jean van der Tak in Demographic Destinies (1990), and David Heer's personal relationship with Kingsley Davis. The book also contains thirty of the most important writings by Kingsley Davis. These were chosen, in part, for the number of citations received in the Cumulative Social Science Citation Index, and in part to ensure that readers would be able to assess the continuity of Kingsley Davis's ideas at all stages of his career."--BOOK JACKET.

This fascinating symposium is based on an assumption that no longer seems to need justification: that the institution of marriage is today experiencing profound changes. But the nature of those changes—their causes and consequences—is very much in need of explication. The experts contributing to this volume bring a wide range of perspectives—sociological, anthropological, economic, historical, psychological, and legal—to the problem of marriage in modern society. Together these essays help illuminate a form of relationship that is both vulnerable and resilient, biological and social, a reflection of and an influence on other social institutions. Contemporary Marriage begins with an important assessment of the revolution in marital behavior since World War II, tracing trends in marriage age, cohabitation, divorce, and fertility. The focus here is primarily on the United States and on idustrial societies in general. Later chapters provide intriguing case studies of particular countries. There is a recurrent interest in the impact on marriage of modernization itself, but a number of essays probe influences other than industrial development, such as strong cultural and historical patterns or legislation and state control. Beliefs and expectations about marriage are explored, and human sexuality and gender roles are also considered as factors in the nature of marriage. Contemporary Marriage offers a rich spectrum of approaches to a problem of central importance. The volume will reward an equally broad spectrum of readers interested in the meaning and future of marriage in our society.

Bringing together various statements on social stratification, this collection offers contributions to debates on the nature of race, class, and gender inequality.

Figuring the Population Bomb traces the genealogy of twentieth-century demographic “facts” that created a mathematical panic about a looming population explosion. This narrative was popularized in the 1970s in Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling book The Population Bomb, which pathologized population growth in the Global South by presenting a doomsday scenario of widespread starvation resulting from that growth. Carole McCann uses an archive of foundational texts, disciplinary histories, participant reminiscences, and organizational records to reveal the gendered geopolitical grounds of the specialized mathematical culture, bureaucratic organization, and intertextual hierarchy that gave authority to the concept of population explosion. These demographic theories and measurement practices ignited the population “crisis” and moved nations to interfere in women’s reproductive lives. Figuring the Population Bomb concludes that mid-twentieth-century demographic figures remain authoritative to this day in framing the context of transnational feminist activism for reproductive justice.

Presents a selection of forty-six readings that provide, an introduction to the sociological perspective, look at how sociologists conduct research, examine the cultural underpinnings of social life, and discuss social groups and social structure, gender and sexuality, deviance, and social stratification, institutions, and change.

L.J. Davis’s 1971 novel, A Meaningful Life, is a blistering black comedy about the American quest for redemption through real estate and a gritty picture of New York City in collapse. Just out of college, Lowell Lake, the Western-born hero of Davis’s novel, heads to New York, where he plans to make it big as a writer. Instead he finds a job as a technical editor, at which he toils away while passion leaks out of his marriage to a nice Jewish girl. Then Lowell discovers a beautiful crumbling mansion in a crime-ridden section of Brooklyn, and against all advice, not to mention his wife’s will, sinks his every penny into buying it. He quits his job, moves in, and spends day and night on demolition and construction. At last he has a mission: he will dig up the lost history of his house; he will restore it to its past grandeur. He will make good on everything that’s gone wrong with his life, and he will even murder to do it.