5 16 Demography A branch of sociology that deals with counting people Demography o The study of size distribution and composition of populations Demography is one of the oldest sociological concerns o Started with Thomas Malthus o Malthusian Theory Idea is that population will outgrow the food supply leading to starvation and death Comes from the belief that population is more like multiplication while food production capacity grows like addition Demographic Transition Theory Malthus s theory hasn t panned out o People started to have fewer kids o Food production grew much much faster than he imagined Demographers have come up with a theory to explain how people have started Demographic transition theory o As the economy develops in a society the death rate drops Once the death rate drops and becomes stable at a new low level the birth rate will fall off to meet it Once this happens the population sixe will be a bit more stable and will not be growing nearly as rapidly Why does this happen o In a pre industrial or early industrial society the population size is kept in check by nature if the population gets too big there isn t enough food to go around o When the society is a bit more industrialized the death rate drops because there is food for everyone This causes population to grow because people are still having a lot of kids o After awhile the birth rate will drop off as well because people start to realize 1 that their kids aren t dropping like flies and 2 that kids are no longer an economic advantage but are actually a drain on resources so the fewer you have the better you are o Look at chart in slides Demographers focus on population characteristics Generally focus on fertility mortality and migration o Fertility rate of child bearing in population o Mortality rate of death in an area s population o Migration movement of people into or out of an area o Care because population influences food environment economy etc Fertility The average number of children produced by women of childbearing age in a particular society Fecundity o The number of children that a woman could possibly have based on biology These rarely line up Mortality Mortality Life expectancy Life span could have Infant mortality rate o The number of deaths in a population o The number of years the average person can expect to live o The total number of years a person could live longest possible life you o The number of infants who die during the first year of life per thousand live births Why does this really matter o Infants cant really take care of themselves o So it s kind of a measure of how good the society is taking care of people o US does not have the lowest infant mortality rate in the world Migration Immigration Emigration o Migration into a country area o Migration out of an area Both emigration and immigration influence the population size The US has had a very unique immigration experience o Most of us are here as a result of immigration o It s keeping the US from having negative population growth Negative population growth when more people are dying than are being born or moving in Sex ratios o The number of males to 100 females in an area s population In general females outlives males More males are born than men Age Sex Pyramid Demographers use an age sex pyramid to graphically present the age group distribution by sex o How is the population clustered by age and sex Can tell you whether the population is going to grow or stay stable Can recognize historical events 5 21 Community and Urban Life The study of community and urban life is one of the oldest concerns in sociology Came up during the industrial revolution Early social thinkers were concerned with how people would adapt to different social settings like cities The interest in communities and urban life developed when the Industrial Revolution lead to large scale urbanization for the first time Urbanization o The agglomeration of people in cities Urbanization not only changes where people live but it also changes how they live o How they use land o How they interact o How they make a living Because there were so many changes early social thinkers wanted to understand how people would adapt to this new way of life Early Theories Ferdinand Tonnies 1887 o Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft Gemeinschaft life in rural villages Characteristics identification with the community emotionalism traditionalism and holistic views of others Gesellschaft life in modern cities Characteristics rationality individualism emotional disengagement and segmented views of others These are both the ideal types but you would never really find Emile Durkheim 1893 them o Mechanical and Organic solidarity Mechanical solidarity Society is held together because everyone is similar and believes the same things Organic solidarity Society is held together by interdependence o Because people cannot fend entirely for themselves everyone has to cooperate which creates society Newer Theories First significant studies in the US came out of the University of Chicago o Came to be known as the Chicago School of Sociology o Main players Robert Park Ernest Burgess Louis Wirth and W E B DuBois but he wasn t at Chicago o Main focus on how people interact with the environment and each other They focused mainly on the idea of urban ecology o Ecology the study of how plants and animals adapt to their environment o Urban ecology the study of how people and cities adapt to their environment They also addressed to rural urban shift Louis Wirth Urbanism as a Way of Life o Cities and small towns differ in three respects size density and heterogeneity Increased size leads to increased specialization Increased density leads to increased tolerance These lead to increased heterogeneity diversity o Idea interactions in the city are fundamentally different because you cannot possibly know everyone so you adapt and deal with people based on what they do not who they are Other theorists focused more on the organization of cities o Realized that though cities and the people in them were diverse they were ordered an organized mosaic o We ll look at three different models of urban organization 1 Burgess Concentric Zone Hypothesis 2 Hoyt s Urban Sector Hypothesis 3 Harris and Ullman Multiple Nuclei Burgess Concentric Zones Burgess looked at Chicago and proposed that there were 5 concentric zones that served different purposes Each zone was inhabited by those who could use it most effectively at the time