P. M. G. Harris, Unknown

The History of Human Populations

Volume I, Forms of Growth and Decline

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

From classic demographic theory to the best contemporary thinking, this book will fruitfully replace previous ways of looking at population expansion and contraction. The 50 years of scholarship that covers 2 1/2 millennia, peoples in all parts of the world, and aggregates from hamlets to the global level, this volume shows that populations grow or decline according to six related patterns. Looking at the path taken by unrestricted population growth, the effects of limited resources, demographic disaster, population explosion, and the implications of stable population theory and demographic transition for numerical trends, Harris reinterprets and insightfully interconnects all of these via six related growth curves, opening the way for a better understanding of how populations expand through changes in births, deaths, and migrations and how they interact with their economic, social, and physical environments. All six trend types, the book shows, are shaped by forces internal to the dynamics of populations themselves. Most frequently, they increase in a constantly proportionally slowing curve as a specific stimulus is spent through expansion. With shocks like war or epidemics, they contract according to an upside down version of this curve. The only two curves until recent times, these are still the most common in local populations. With modern economic and social change, some populations--mostly larger ones--follow one of four newer growth patterns, either increasing at a steady rate, growing in a gradually slowing pattern between this constancy and the rapidly decelerating basic growth curve, exploding in an accelerating fashion, or in a few ominous cases, decreasing in an accelerating decline. Where these curves occur depends on the distinctive ways populations interact with economic changes. Harris's findings have profound implications for understanding economic and social change. These implications will be discussed in the following volume.

---

Hinweis: Dieser Artikel kann nur an eine deutsche Lieferadresse ausgeliefert werden.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Praeger
• Seitenzahl: 466
• Erscheinungstermin: 30. Juli 2001
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 235mm x 157mm x 29mm
• Gewicht: 822g
• ISBN-13: 9780275971311
• ISBN-10: 0275971317
• Artikelnr.: 21869440

Autorenporträt

P. M. G. Harris

Inhaltsangabe

Introductions Preface Introduction New Viewpoints on an Old Topic: What
Form Does Population Growth Take--and Why? Patterning the Parts as Well as
the Whole across Four Centuries of American Demographic Increase Common
Forms of Growth for All New Settlements? Evidence from Other Northern
European Colonizations Other Striking But General G-Based Trends:
"Demographic Disaster" and "Population Explosion" in Latin America, the
Caribbean, and Oceania The Growth and Decline of Old World Peoples:
Insights from Europe, Where the Debate Began How Regional Changes of
Population in Europe Underlay National Ones--from Andalusia to the Amur,
from Trondheim to the Tisza Sketching Population History in Asia and
Africa: Outlines of the Often Obscure The Growth of Cities and the Spread
of Urbanization The Local Generality of the Simplest G-Shaped Trends:
Cross-Cultural Examples Over Time Conclusion Appendix Bibliography Index