Speaker: Professor Laurel Bossen (McGill University)

(Time) 13:30- 16:30, 19th (Sunday) June, 2005
(Place) The First Meeting Room (Daiichi Kaigishitsu), National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan

This workshop is held with Suzuki Research Meeting and is open to everybody who is interested in the development studies. The presentation and discussion will be done in English.

Dr. Bossen is going to talk about land and population controls in rural China for 1 hour, following 2 hour questions and replies and discussion.

If you have any questions about this workshop, please contact Nobuhiro Kishigami at the National Museum of Ethnology. His e-mail address: inuit@idc.minpaku.ac.jp and his office phone number: 06-6878-8255.

Abstract

LAND AND POPULATION CONTROLS IN RURAL CHINA
  Laurel Bossen

In the study of China's rural development, anthropologists and other social scientists have tended to focus on changes in property rights, or changes in family planning and birth control policies. The literature has tended to treat both separately, as if they were unrelated. Economists and political scientists look at land policy, while demographers, sociologists and anthropologists tend to look at family planning. Yet it is obvious that the two domains are, in real life, closely related as households attempt to match and manage their land and labor resources. Land and population policy and practice should thus be analyzed together. In this paper I attempt to bring together questions about land and family planning in relation to both policy and practice. I will also examine the significance of lineage revival. I will draw on my own fieldwork in rural north China and comparative material to examine local and regional variations and their significance.