JosephChamieBirths, Deaths, Migrations, and Other Important Population Matters: A Collection of Short EssaysIndependently Published, 2021. 548 p. $19.99 (paper)
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: This book represents a collection of 135 essays—essentially blogs—published on internet websites over the past 20 years by Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division and subsequently research director of the Center for Migration Studies and editor of International Migration Review, now retired. The websites are YaleGlobal (https://yaleglobal.yale.edu, now lamentably defunct, but archived), Inter Press Service (http://www.ipsnews.net), PassBlue (https://www.passblue.com, specialized in covering the United Nations), and The Globalist (https://www.theglobalist.com)—all mainstream, upscale outlets. The perspective is global, and the essays cover statistical, political, economic, and ethical issues of population. The range of subjects covered is comprehensive, with the essays being analytically sorted into 17 areas. These start with the canonical ones (mortality, fertility, migration, urbanization) and move to the results of these dynamics for population growth, structure by age, sex, and location, and the economic and social implications thereof. Gender, population and development, population and environment, and marriage and households take the discussion beyond demographic dynamics narrowly considered. Further afield, there are essays on sex before marriage, assisted suicide, surrogacy, robots, state failure, and the smuggling of human beings. Some sections are explicitly regional: Africa, Asia (India and China), Europe (including Russia), one section on the United States, and one devoted to demographic aspects of Israel and Palestine. A caution—there is nothing here on race and ethnicity, or gender as considered beyond the standard international organization boxes of male and female—but we are looking at 20 years of collected essays, and demography is still coming to terms with these issues in today's rapidly evolving context. A number of recent essays are devoted to the Covid-19 pandemic. The scope of the collection is about as wide as it could be and the depth is what would be expected from well-written brief essays. There is excellent utilization of data; made especially useful since each essay provides a link to the original online piece (archived in the case of YaleGlobal) with all the fancy graphics. Chamie's mixture of long-term structural with hot-dossier, but possibly ephemeral, topics is excellent. His central thesis is that population is a key global issue, one with which all demographers would agree but rather few really tackle head-on because they tend to specialize and stick by and large to facts rather than what they mean writ large. The author's advantage is that, at the Population Division, he was able (or forced) to observe population in all its dimensions and to navigate its analysis through (geo)politically turbulent waters. The essays reflect the perspective from that catbird seat (a term attributed to baseball broadcaster Red Barber; in fact, it was American novelist James Thurber who coined the phrase). The collection is worth dipping into in its own right, and could be a good tool to indoctrinate starting students of demography on why population is an important subject.
DOI: 10.1111/padr.12396
Author: Landis MacKellar
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,000
OpenAlex ID: W3141033041