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

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