African Population And Capitalism

Historical Perspectives

Dennis D. Cordell, Joel W. Gregory, Dennis D. Cordell, Joel W. Gregory

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367014001
• eBook ISBN: 9780429721946
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This is a synthesis of case studies and theory which takes issue with established African demographic theory, emphasising that demography is an historical process, a permanent and varied adaptation to social and economic change. The book covers 20 African societies in the sub-Saharan region, examining not the effects of slavery, colonialism and capitalism on each, but also the resistance and resilience of indigenous African institutions and individuals.

1 AFRICAN HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY The Search for a Theoretical Framework

DENNIS D. CORDELL
JOEL W. GREGORY
VICTOR PICHÉ

DOI:10.4324/9780429043864-1

Demographers and historians have largely ignored the past of African populations. Yet, much heat and some light are being generated by studies of high birthrates; less heat and more light have been focused on the all-too-slow improvement in infant, child, and general survivorship. And the massive movements of African populations—from fields and pastures to towns and cities, from the interior to the coasts, not to mention intercontinental migration and refugee flight—figure prominently in descriptions of African economic and political crises.

The passionate discussion of the present, however, is being pursued in ignorance of the past. The most dramatic example of overly simplistic analysis is the facile linking of the African food crisis—and more generally the crisis of international confidence in Africa's ability to "develop"—to the rapid growth of Africa's population.

This collection of case studies provides historical background for the understanding of African demography. The chapters call for greater historical sophistication: From these essays it is clear that African demography evolved in diverse ways, according to the specificity of local conditions and outside pressures (see Jewsiewicki, Chapter 17, this collection). They also take issue with the simplistic assumptions that African fertility and mortality have always been high and that mortality necessarily declined as a result of European intervention, thus creating the conditions for Africa's much decried "population explosion."

This overly simplistic and ahistorical view has provided fertile soil for the propagation of demographic transition theory as the appropriate paradigm—implicit or explicit—for the understanding of African demography in the recent past. The demographic transition is a descriptive model of the historical evolution of some European populations. Its basic phases are:

• (1) At the beginning of the transition: high fertility and high mortality, with a very slow rate of natural increase (births minus deaths).
• (2) In the first phase of change: mortality begins to decline, while fertility remains high; the rate of natural increase accelerates.
• (3) After a phase of increasing and rapid population growth: fertility begins to decline; the rate of natural increase thus begins to diminish.
• (4) A the end of the transaction: a new equilibrium is established, again characterized by a very slow rate of natural increase, this time at low levels of fertility and mortality.

The model specifies neither the timing of the phases nor the causes for the decline in mortality and fertility. Those who have used the paradigm to describe various societies have attempted to date the timing and the length of the transition and to identify the causes of decline (see O'Brien, Chapter 11, in this volume, for further discussion). The causes for improved survivorship are the subject of debate: better socioeconomic conditions in general or improved health and sanitation? The relative importance of reasons for the eventual decline in fertility is also open to question: changes in the economic costs and benefits of children or shifts in the value system of parents?

Demographic transition theory, born of European experience, has profoundly influenced thinking about population change in the Third World. In particular, the rapid rates of population growth in many Africans societies are perceived in terms of a "delayed" transition. The high rates of natural increase are interpreted as a confirmation that mortality decline has commenced but that fertility decline remains in eclipse. Implicitly or explicitly, the major question about African demography becomes, "How can fertility decline be induced?" This model of orderly and predictable decline in death and birth rates precludes a more complex and varied analysis of what is happening and how it came about.

The principal goal of this collection is not to refute demographic transition theory, but rather to show that population changes are historical processes, which vary from one period and one society to another. Population change is the combined result of births and deaths, and of immigration and emigration, two sets of additions and two of subtractions, from the total numbers of a society. This process is only a part of the demographic regime, which also includes the strategies that allow families and households, women and men, successive generations, and competing social classes to ensure their survival. The demographic regime is based on the necessity—and the authors of the essays would agree that these necessities are fundamentally material—for societies to reproduce and to produce if they are to survive. Reproduction begins with the necessary creation and recreation of labor; production begins with food and shelter.

There is no single pattern that explains demographic change. As we have maintained elsewhere (Gregory, Cordell, Gervais, 1984: viii), population is neither an independent nor a dependent variable, but a thread that must be interwoven with many others to produce a tapestry that accurately depicts a society's past.

Beyond this general objective, a specific concern of this collection is to show the links between the evolution of the demographic regime and the history of capitalist penetration in Africa over the past two or three centuries. For example, many of the case studies (Cordell, Lututala, Turshen, Dawson, Heywood and Thornton, etc.) show that mortality increased—sometimes dramatically—during the first half of the colonial period. When mortality did begin to decline, the curves depicting the change are marked by peaks and valleys that differ from one society to another. Even where the peaks and valleys are similar, the studies suggest that explanations for them may be strikingly different (compare, for example, Turshen, Chapter 12, with Heywood and Thornton, Chapter 15).

Second, the empirical evidence indicates that among some societies, capitalist penetration may have occasioned increases in fertility. Dawson's case study of the Kikuyu (Chapter 13), whose fertility is today the highest of any society in Africa, dramatically illustrates that a drop in mortality was probably much less important than a rise in fertility during the colonial era. O'Brien (Chapter 11) illustrates that African societies "fine-tuned" fertility to match differing patterns of demands for labor.

Third, several chapters (Becker, Diouf, and Mbodj, Chapter 5; Painter, Chapter 8; Cordell, Chapter 9; Lututala, Chapter 10; Gregory and Mandala, Chapter 14; and Proctor, Chapter 16) offer compelling evidence of the need to include migration in any study of the African demographic regime. Natural increase (births minus deaths) is important, but its analysis is incomplete without the additions and subtractions caused by immigration and emigration.

Failure to place contemporary questions about African population into an historical context has led to an oversimplified diagnosis of the so-called demographic crisis in Africa, emphasizing the dangers of further delay in fertility decline. Yet few policy alternatives to fertility control have been generated, even by those who criticize the ahistorical, conventional wisdom. A historical rereading of the African demographic record calls for an alternative conceptual framework beyond the tradition of transition theory.

It is not surprising that many who criticize the conventional wisdom have turned to Marxism and feminism. The practice of historical and dialectical materialism has generated a wide-ranging set of hypotheses about the effects of capitalist penetration in Africa. The study of African and colonial patriarchy and the dynamic of the sexual division of labor has produced a potentially complementary set of hypotheses about reproduction and production. Yet little of this conceptually rich work has influenced the study of African demography. The strengths of such analysis, with its emphasis on conflict and discontinuity, its inclusion of irregularity and disequilibrium, and the historical and material basis of its perspective, are potentially productive antidotes to the limits of the static equilibrium model of homogeneous, harmonious, and regular change described by transition theory.

MATERIALIST ANALYSIS AND HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY

In fact, demographic theory in general is dramatically underdeveloped. In demography there is no explicit body of theory equivalent to Parsonian functionalism in sociology or to liberal and neoclassical theory in economics. Within demography, specific subjects have benefitted from the theoretical byproducts of other disciplines. Urbanization and intraurban migration, for example, have been analysed using the concepts of the "human ecology" school of Chicago sociology (Duchac, 1974). Fertility has been scrutinized with the aid of "middle-level" theory drawn from sociology (Davis and Blake, 1956, for example) and from economics (Becker, 1960, or Easterlin, 1968). And mathematical models have had considerable impact on demographic methods (Dublin and Lotka, 1925, for example).

Yet a general theory of demography simply does not exist. While most demographers would probably say that the object of their discipline is to study the renewal of human populations, they would be hard pressed to explain why this renewal is significant and important. Most would hesitate when asked how this renewal of human populations is related to other social processes. Preoccupation with links between specific demographic events (a set of births for example) and specific nondemographic events (a recession, for example) is common to much of "social demography." But a holistic view of demographic renewal in relation to that which is "nondemographic" is almost nonexistent. This is not surprising, given that a holistic view of demographic renewal itself is rare.

Materialist Analysis and the Externalization of Demography

Even within the theoretically inclined materialist tradition, demographic theory has not flourished. Demographic renewal, or, in materialist vocabulary, demographic reproduction, has been externalized, In historical materialist analysis—preoccupied by relations of production and the production of material goods—the production and reproduction of human beings has, until recently, almost always been relegated to biology, as if this dynamic and dialectic process could be transformed into a simple, exogenous variable.

To illustrate our point, we refer to major materialist authors who have worked on Africa. Samir Amin (1972), in "L'Afrique souspeuplée," takes a strong anti-Malthusian position (consistent with at least one school of orthodox Marxist theory), asserting that African underdevelopment is the result of "underpopulation" (on this topic, see Chapter 4 by Mahadi and Inikori). No theoretical significance is attached to the concept of underpopulation; it is an exogenous empirical fact that "explains," in part, why African development is so slow. And this, in spite of Marx's succinct but careful definition of "overpopulation" (Marx, 1954: I).

Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch (1972), in her seminal work on Central Africa, leaves demography to others. Yet the specificity of North Central African demographic history is a fundamental part of any comprehensive understanding of these societies. The relatively low fertility, population density, and high mobility (and perhaps extremely high mortality) are part of a unique demographic regime that was only marginally able to renew itself in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.

At least two important new developments in materialist analysis have, however, reintegrated parts of the demographic regime. The production and reproduction of human beings is the focus of some of the work of economic anthropologists working on the "domestic mode of production" in precapitalist Africa (Meillassoux, 1975b; Rey, 1978; Dupré, 1982; Canadian Journal of African Studies, 1985). It is likewise the focus of feminist materialists interested in the sexual division of labor and household and domestic labor in capitalist social formations (Critique de l'Économie Politique, 1981; Sociologie et Sociétés, 1981). However, these feminist contributions are often limited to fertility and nuptiality and have little to say about migration; neither set of contributions has much to say about morbidity and mortality, which are other essential parts of the demographic regime.

A second recent development in materialist analysis does focus on mobility and migration. The elaboration of a theory of labor mobility in advanced capitalism emphasizes the need for a highly mobile labor force in order to combat the law of the decreasing rate of profit (deGaudemar, 1976; Nikolinakos, 1975). Two forms of mobility are identified: spatial and sectoral. The first refers to what demographers commonly call migration, the second to what sociologists and economists would call inter- and intraprofessional mobility. The two, of course, frequently coincide in the reproduction of the labor force for specific zones and types of capitalist production. For materialist demography, the analysis of labor migration as part of the dynamic of the reproduction of the labor force suggests a way to reintegrate migration and "natural" increase—fertility (births) minus mortality (deaths)—into a single demographic theory.

The Exclusion of Materialism in Historical Demography

Historical demography is just beginning to discover historical materialism. This fact is more than happenstance. Historical demography, a generation after its birth, remains essentially a set of methods for the reconstitution of families for the measurement of some demographic events: births, deaths, and marriages. These methods are, in and of themselves, the result of a unique, but single type of data: the Roman Catholic and Anglican parish registers, or their equivalents (Mormon records or Japanese temple lists, for example). This definition of historical demography in terms of sources is self-consciously explicit:

Demography ... is the most abstract of the social sciences, because it only studies man [sic] in terms of numbers and lengths of time.... The originality of historical demography is to work with sources which were not created by historical demography or for it.... Our work ... is to see how from these sources—which were not created with a scientific purpose in mind—one can construct good statistics [Dupâquier in Sauvy, 1982: 44-45].

What is striking to the social scientist in general and, more specifically, to the materialist social scientist, is the absence of a reason for tabulating demographic events. Orthodox historical demography does not have a substantive objective; it is hardly surprising, therefore, that historical demography has not generated a set of complementary or competing problématiques.

The dual constraint of rigorous data requirements for the application of contemporary demographic methods to historical statistics and of a narrow set of data sources has retarded the search for alternative methods and sources for the historical study of population. Yet the potential in historical demography for innovation is great, if new methods can be invented (see Cordell and Gregory, 1980). In fact, materialist analysis must incorporate demographic production and reproduction into its historical method if social relations of production are to be fully explored, and feminist analysis must provide a framework for the study of the entire demographic regime.

A MATERIALIST APPROACH

Marx on Population

Materialist analysis in demography begins with Chapter 25 of Capital (Marx, 1954: I) with its important insights for demographic analysis—in particular, that each historic mode of production has its own law of population. First, in the capitalist mode of production, neither the absolute nor the proportional decrease or increase in the working population renders capital insufficient; nor does its decrease render capital overabundant. On the contrary, it is the expansion and contraction of capital that produces, alternatively, the relative lack or overabundance of labor. Second, in the process of accumulation, the proportional decrease in the amount of capital allocated to the costs of wages and salaries and the training of labor (variable capital) leads to a decrease in relative demand for labor. A relative surplus population is thus created since part of the workers are no longer necessary. It is called relative because it does not originate from an increase in population that is greater than available resources (as Malthus argues), but originates in the increase in the fraction of capital allocated to machines, tec...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• About the Contributors Page
• Acknowledgments Page
• 1. African Historical Demography: The Search for a Theoretical Framework
• PART I. PRELUDE TO COLONIALISM: SEQUELS OF SLAVERY
• PART II. WEST AFRICA: THE DEMOGRAPHIC EFFECTS OF FRENCH COLONIAL POLICIES
• PART III. CENTRAL AFRICA: FORCED MIGRATION AND THE DEMOGRAPHIC REGIME
• PART IV. EAST AND NORTHEAST AFRICA: CONQUEST AND THE READJUSTMENT OF FERTILITY AND MORTALITY
• PART V. SOUTHERN AFRICA: INTENSE PRESSURES ON DEMOGRAPHIC VIABILITY
• PART VI. CONCLUSION
• References
• About the Book and Editors