Symposium
02 Jul 2009 – 04 Jul 2009 · 2.00 am

Culture Meets Demography. Key Concepts of Demographic Research in Historical and Cultural Perspectives

Venue: ZfL, Schützenstr. 18, 10117 Berlin, 3. Et.
Contact: Jörg Thomas Richter
Research project(s): Generations and Inheritance

Program

Organized by the research project Generationen in der Erbengesellschaft. Ein Deutungsmuster soziokulturellen Wandels at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin.

Sponsored by VolkswagenStiftung.

 

DemoChronics: Historical Conceptions

11:00 am
Sigrid Weigel (ZfL Berlin): Perspectives for a Cultural Demography

Pascale Laborier (Centre Marc Bloch Berlin): Population Statistics as a Political Instrument

2:00 pm
Jörg Thomas Richter (ZfL Berlin): Providential Numbers: Counting People in Late Eighteenth-Century North America

Lars Behrisch (University of Bielefeld): Statistics in Ancien Régime Politics: France and Germany in the Eighteenth Century

4:00 pm
Wolfgang Schäffner (Buenos Aires): The Birth of the Average Man

Theodore M. Porter (University of California, Los Angeles): Lineages of Insanity: From Medical Case Histories to Statistics

Friday, July 3, 2009
DemoTopics: Conceptual Arenas

10:00 am
Sebastian Klüsener (MPI for Demographic Research Rostock): Capitalism vs. Communism, or rather Pauperism vs. Peuplierung? Exploring the Origins of the German East-West Divide in Non-Marital Fertility

Mikołaj Szołtysek (MPI for Demographic Research Rostock): Historical Family Systems and the European Great Divide: Persistence of the Past or Persistence of Perspective?

12:00 am
Veronika Lipphardt (Humboldt University Berlin): Population and Evolution: Biological Expertise and Demographic Knowledge

Ursula Ferdinand (Westfälische Wilhelms University Münster): From the Rationalisation of Sexual Life to a Cultural-Science-Based Sexology: The Development of Julius Wolf’s Idea of Birth Rate Decline

3:00 pm
Martin Kohli (European University Institute Florence): The Field of Intergenerational Transfers: How We Construct Demographic Concepts

4:30 pm
Heike Kahlert (University of Rostock / ZiF Hildesheim): Demographic Change as Change in Gender Relations? Critical Reflections on the Theory of the 'Second Demographic Transition'

Ulrike Vedder (ZfL Berlin): Literary Demography: Contemporary Generational Novels

6:30 pm
Ohad Parnes (ZfL Berlin): Aging and Senescence in the History of Demography

Saturday, July 4, 2009

DemoLogics: Cultural-Political Interferences

10:00 am
Sandra Krapf (MPI for Demographic Research Rostock): Political Demography: A New Cross-Disciplinary Approach

Susan Greenhalgh (University of California, Irvine): "Too Many Chinese!" Population Science and the Making of Chinese Politics and Culture

12:00 pm
Christina Benninghaus (Ruhr University Bochum): Biblical Figures, Statistical Values and Personified Hedonism: Visualizing Childlessness in Modern Germany

Thomas Macho (Humboldt University Berlin): "Death Sang to Sleep with Lullaby": Disputing Infant Mortality

2:30 pm
Tom Fricke (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor): Demography's People: Culture, Relationship, and Personhood in the Demographer's Craft

Stefan Willer (ZfL Berlin): Demography and the Future: A Cultural Approach

4:00 pm
Conference Closing

Media Response

07 Aug 2009
Culture meets Demography

Conference report by Alexander Schwieren, in: H-Soz-Kult, 7 Aug 2009