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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Moslem countries have a high birth rate (4096-50%) and a rapid rate of natural growth (28%-34%). Not even in towns where mortality has decreased does natality appear to have decreased, and not even where the family nucleus is beginning to assert itself can a drop in the birth rate be ascertained. This is attributed to a “backward attitude toward economic and social changes.”
1 Cp. in particular Mahmoud Seklani, "La fécondité dans les pays arabes," in Population, XV, 5, pp. 831-856, October-December 1960; Dudley Kirk, "Factors Affecting Moslem Fertility," in Proceedings of the World Congress on Population, organized under the auspices of the United Nations, 1965.
2 Dudley Kirk, op. cit., cites and analyzes briefly recent studies relating to fertility in Moslem countries. These are for the most part focused on family planning, properly speaking, rather than on an explanation of traditional behavior.
3 See on this subject, beside the sources already mentioned: J. C. Chasteland, M. Amani, O.A. Puech, La population de l'Iran, perspectives d'évolution 1956- 1986, Teheran, I.E.R.S., 1966, p. 312. The proportion of unmarried women (aged fifty in a population of age fifty) in certain countries is as follows: Iran-1.2; Iraq-4.2; Pakistan-0.9; Tunisia-2.3; France-8.0; United States-6.5 (according to the censuses carried out between 1954 and 1960).
4 M. Seklani, op. cit., p. 831.
5 R. Walzer, H.A.R. Gibb, s.v. Akhlak, in Encyclopédie de l'Islam, new edition, vol. I.
6 G.H. Bousquet, s.v. Ada, in Encyclopédie de l'Islam, new edition, vol. I.
7 P. Vieille "Les conditions sociales de la production agricole en régions dé tériorées. Un exemple: le Morvan," in Esprit, VI, June, 1955.
8 Data relative to present behavior according to D. Kirk, op. cit., citing the results of recent research.
9 P. Gemaehling, in G. Friedmann (editor), Villes et campagnes, compte rendu de la deuxième semaine sociologique, Paris, A. Colin, 1953, p. 335.
10 J.E. Havel, La condition de la femme, Paris, A. Colin, 1961, p. 144-145.
11 This hypothesis is undoubtedly quite different from the one that R. Koenig would formulate in his course at the University of Cologne. I have unfortunately not been able to consult him. According to his concept, every organized commu nity should have controlled fertility and conversely. The author takes as a no table example the Egyptian village with its great residential mobility, its lack of local insitutions, and its natural ferility. The proposition does not seem entirely satisfactory to me. Certainly, in France before the Revolution, the regions with concentrated habitation, the better organized communes, had a less high natality than communes with dispersed habitation. But since the Revolution the tendency to restrict births has been much more widespread, much more rapid in areas of dispersed habitation, which demonstrates clearly the intervention of another factor.
Neither can it be said that the Iranian village is unorganized, although it is not organized by the producers themselves, but, traditionally, by the feudal lord.
12 Ph. Aries, Histoire des populations françaises et de leurs attitudes devant la vie depuis le XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Self, 1948, demonstrates this in two ways. Through cartographical correspondences: from 1801 to 1936 in the areas where there were small property owners fertility decreased most; tenant farming areas were less affected by the decrease of natality. Through case analysis: in one de partment considered as an example, two social strata are remarkably prolific: the poor agricultural laborers and the rich farmers (that is, two categories whose subsistence does not depend on precise limits of the land). These latter live largely without care about the future, their children pose merely the problem of the division of the capital for exploitation and not the unsolvable one of the division of landed property. Moreover the author shows how under certain con ditions the small land-owner or one who aspires to be a property holder, is led to birth control.
13 P. Vieille, M. Kotobi, L'origine des ouvriers de Tehran, Teheran, mimeo graphed, I.E.R.S., 1965.
14 This is quite different from the hypothesis which we rejected earlier in this discussion as to births measured by deaths.
15 P. Vieille, "Un mariage en Iran," in Revue française de sociologie, VII, 1, January-March 1966.
16 D. Paulme, published by Femmes d'Afrique noire, Paris, Mouton, 1960. "Everywhere the birth of the first child is a more important event than the institution of marriage. It marks the accession of the parents to a higher age class, and very frequently a special term designating that a man or woman is married rather than single is unknown." (p. 19).
17 The devaluation of the small child is frequent in present-day underdeve loped societies, although it does not always assume the same form. Hence, in Urundi, nursing babies are coddled, but no attention is paid to new-born that are being weaned, whose mortality in consequence is very high. New interest is taken in the children at an age when they can start work. (E.M. Albert, in D. Paulme, op. cit., p. 192-200).
18 P. Vieille and M. Kotobi, Famille et union de famille en Iran, paper read at the VIth world congress of sociology.
19 The complex of Rostam was referred to by F. Hoveida, at the conference of I.E.R.S., Teheran. 1965.
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