Fertility in Namibia : Changes in fertility levels in North-Central Namibia 1960-2001, including an assessment of the impact of HIV

The aim of this study was to estimate the development of fertility in North-Central Namibia, former Ovamboland, from 1960 to 2001. Special attention was given to the onset of fertility decline and to the impact of the HIV epidemic on fertility. An additional aim was to introduce parish registers as a source of data for fertility research in Africa. Data used consisted of parish registers from Evangelical Lutheran congregations, the 1991 and 2001 Population and Housing Censuses, the 1992 and 2000 Namibia Demographic and Health Surveys, and the HIV sentinel surveillances of 1992-2004. Both period and cohort fertility were analysed. The P/F ratio method was used when analysing census data. The impact of HIV infection on fertility was estimated indirectly by comparing the fertility histories of women who died at an age of less than 50 years with the fertility of other women. The impact of the HIV epidemic on fertility was assessed both among infected women and in the general population. Fertility in the study population began to decline in 1980. The decline was rapid during the 1980s, levelled off in the early 1990s at the end of war of independence and then continued to decline until the end of the study period. According to parish registers, total fertility was 6.4 in the 1960s and 6.5 in the 1970s, and declined to 5.1 in the 1980s and 4.2 in the 1990s. Adjustment of these total fertility rates to correspond to levels of fertility based on data from the 1991 and 2001 censuses resulted in total fertility declining from 7.6 in 1960-79 to 6.0 in 1980-89, and to 4.9 in 1990-99. The decline was associated with increased age at first marriage, declining marital fertility and increasing premarital fertility. Fertility among adolescents increased, whereas the fertility of women in all other age groups declined. During the 1980s, the war of independence contributed to declining fertility through spousal separation and delayed marriages. Contraception has been employed in the study region since the 1980s, but in the early 1990s, use of contraceptives was still so limited that fertility was higher in North-Central Namibia than in other regions of the country. In the 1990s, fertility decline was largely a result of the increased prevalence of contraception. HIV prevalence among pregnant women increased from 4% in 1992 to 25% in 2001. In 2001, total fertility among HIV-infected women (3.7) was lower than that among other women (4.8), resulting in total fertility of 4.4 among the general population in 2001. The HIV epidemic explained more than a quarter of the decline in total fertility at population level during most of the 1990s. The HIV epidemic also reduced the number of children born by reducing the number of potential mothers. In the future, HIV will have an extensive influence on both the size and age structure of the Namibian population. Although HIV influences demographic development through both fertility and mortality, the effect through changes in fertility will be smaller than the effect through mortality. In the study region, as in some other regions of southern Africa, a new type of demographic transition is under way, one in which population growth stagnates or even reverses because of the combined effects of declining fertility and increasing mortality, both of which are consequences of the HIV pandemic.

'Someone to welcome you home' : Infertility, medicines and the Sukuma-Nyamwezi

This study Someone to Welcome you home: Infertility, medicines and the Sukuma-Nyamwezi , looks into the change in the cosmological ideology of the Sukuma-Nyamwezi of Tanzania and into the consequences of this change as expressed through cultural practices connected to female infertility. This analysis is based on 15 months of fieldwork in Isaka, in the Shinyanga area. In this area the birth rate is high and at the same time infertility is a problem for individual women. The attitudes connected to fertility and the attempts to control fertility provide a window onto social and cultural changes in the area. Even though the practices connected to fertility seem to be individualized the problem of individual women - the discourse surrounding fertility is concerned with higher cosmological levels. The traditional cosmology emphasized the centrality of the chief as the source of well-being. He was responsible for rain and the fertility of the land and, thus, for the well-being of the whole society. The holistic cosmology was hierarchical and the ritual practices connected to chiefship which dealt with the whole of the society were recursively applied at the lower levels of hierarchy, in the relationships between individuals. As on consequence of changes in the political system, the chiefship was legally abolished in the early years of Independence. However, the holistic ideology, which was the basis of the chiefship, did not disappear and instead acquired new forms. It is argued that in African societies the common efflorence of diviner-healers and witchcraft can be a consequence of the change in the relationship between the social reality and the cosmological ideology. In the Africanist research the increase in the numbers of diviner-healers and witchcraft is usually seen as a consequence of individualism and modernization. In this research, however, it is seen as an altered form of holism, as a consequence of which the hierarchical relations between women and men have changed. Because of this, the present-day practices connected to reproduction pay special attention to the control of women s sexuality.

The Politics and Policies of Reproductive Agency

This study examines the politics and policies of reproductive agency through a redescription of three Finnish policy documents dealing with the declining birth rate: the Government report on the future 'Finland for people of all ages' (2004), Business and Policy Forum EVA report 'Condemned to Diminish?' (Tuomitut vähenemään?) (2003), and the Family Federation's 'Population Policy Program' (2004). The redescription is done with the help of the notion of reproductive agency, which draws on Drucilla Cornell's concepts of the imaginary domain and bodily integrity. The imaginary domain is the moral and psychic space people need in order to form their personality, which is created in constant identificatory processes. The aim of the processes is imaginary coherence. As the personality is embodied, forming one s imaginary coherence always includes attempts for bodily integrity, also entailing attempts to arrive at an understanding of one's procreative capacities. Besides Cornell, I draw on Judith Butler's thinking and comprehend gender performatively as doing, and in relation to that agency as part of the performative process of one's personality. Reproductive agency is understood in this study as the possibilities to live differently the hegemonic forms of procreative life. I deal with three redescriptive themes: the family, economics and gender. The family is a central element in that it is considered the main location of reproduction. With regard to reproductive agency, the documents include problematic conceptions of the family. It is defined as a heterosexual, monogamous, conjugal relationship, which affects reproductive agency in that these notions do not allow for different modes of family life. The second prominent aspect, economics, features on two levels: the macroeconomic level of GDP, employment and competitiveness, and the level of family policies and concern about family finances. Macroeconomic-level argumentation is problematic in the context of reproductive agency because it implies that procreation is a duty of citizens, and thus has effects on values attached to reproductive potential. On the other hand, family policies may advance reproductive agency in supporting families financially. However, such policies also define how the family is understood, thereby affecting reproductive agency. The third theme, gender, intersects with many issues in the policy documents. All three texts consider the roles of men and women differently: women are primarily responsible for the family, and both men's and women's reproductive agency is affected in that the roles in the procreative process are predefined. EVA and the Family Federation see women as the main target of population policies, and consider it legitimate to try to change women s reproductive decisions. Implicit in the notion of reproductive agency is the idea that it should be possible to overcome and live differently the sex difference, but the three documents do not open up opportunities for that. The notion of reproductive agency makes it also possible to question the legitimacy of population policies in general and offers new perspectives on the vocabularies used in the three policy texts, providing insights into the values and logics that support the concepts.

Matalan syntyvyyden syitä ja seurauksia julkisen eläkejärjestelmän ylläpidon ja uudistamisen näkökulmasta

Viime vuosikymmeninä teollistuneissa OECD-maissa yksi suurimmista väestöllisistä muutoksista on tapahtunut syntyvyydessä. Sotien jälkeen syntyneiden suurten ikäluokkien jälkeen useissa teollistuneissa maissa väestönkasvun trendi on ollut laskeva, mikä puolestaan on johtanut kasvavaan huoleen matalan syntyvyyden sosioekonomisista seurauksista. Matala syntyvyyden taso on monissa kehittyneissä maissa luonut varjon valtion ylläpitämän sosiaaliturvajärjestelmän ylle ja sen rahoituspohjan heikentyminen on kasvattanut huolta järjestelmän tulevaisuudesta. Myös muun muassa viime vuosikymmenten taloudelliset taantuma-ajat, väestön ikärakenteessa ja työmarkkinoilla tapahtuneet muutokset, sekä väestön ikääntyminen ja veronmaksajien väheneminen ovat luoneet uudenlaiset paineet julkisen sosiaaliturva- ja eläkejärjestelmän ylläpidolle ja rahoittamiselle. Mietittäessä puolestaan syitä syntyvyyden madaltumiseen viime vuosikymmeninä, ovat tutkimukset osoittaneet, etteivät talous- ja sosiaalijärjestelmien rakenne sekä niissä tapahtuneet muutokset ole olleet tässä muutoksessa merkityksettömiä. Verotuksella ja valtion myöntämillä sosiaalituilla on osoitettu olevan vaikutus yksilön lapsenhankinta- ja myös perheenmuodostamispäätökseen. Tässä tutkielmassa tutkimuksen kohteena ovat matala syntyvyys, sekä sen syyt ja seuraukset taloustieteellisestä näkökulmasta. Tutkielman tarkoituksena on selvittää matalan syntyvyyden ja perheen perustamisen sekä jakojärjestelmäisen eläkejärjestelmän välistä yhteyttä, ja löytää todisteita siitä, millaisia kannustimia julkisella eläkejärjestelmällä syntyvyyden suhteen on. Li-säksi tutkielmassa perehdytään julkisen eläkejärjestelmän tulevaisuuteen väestöllisten haastei-den edessä, ja tarkastellaan järjestelmän uudistamismahdollisuuksia. Matalaa syntyvyyttä tarkastellaan muun muassa väestöllisen transition teorian avulla. Matalan syntyvyyden ja jakojärjestelmäisen eläkejärjestelmän suhdetta tutkitaan Zhangin ja Zhangin (2007) matemaattisella mallinnuksella, jonka avulla saadaan selville, että julkisen eläkejärjes-telmän käyttö sosiaalisen hyvinvoinnin optimoinnissa on pääomainvestointien ulkoisvaikutusten myötä oikeutettua, ja että järjestelmällä ja sitä rahoittavalla tuloverolla on negatiivinen vaikutus syntyvyyteen, mikäli vanhemmat preferoivat lastensa laadullisia, hyvinvointiin liittyviä ominai-suuksia niiden lukumäärään. Perheen perustamisen ja eläkejärjestelmän suhdetta puolestaan tarkastellaan Ehrlichin ja Kimin (2007) tutkimuksen pohjalta. Ehrlichin ja Kimin tutkimuksen tulos on, että julkista eläkejärjestel-mää rahoittavan tuloveron ja sen korottamisen vaikutus syntyvyyteen ja perheen perustamiseen on negatiivinen. Julkisen eläkejärjestelmän viittä eri uudistamisvaihtoehtoa ja niiden hyvinvointi-vaikutuksia käsitellään tutkielmassa pääosin Attanasion, Kitaon ja Violanten (2007) mallin avul-la. Jokaisella reformilla on Attanasion, Kitaon ja Violanten mukaan erilaisia makrotaloudellisia vaikutuksia, joita tarkastellaan tutkielmassa pääosin sanallisesti ja graafisesti, sekä eri tutkimus-ten tuloksia vertailemalla. Tutkielmassa käsite syntyvyys rinnastetaan taloustieteellisessä mielessä lasten kysynnäksi, ja sitä tutkitaan pääosin makrotaloudellisesta näkökulmasta. Kaikki tutkielmassa käytettävät matemaattiset mallit ovat limittäisten sukupolvien malleja ja julkisella eläkejärjestelmällä viitataan jakojärjestelmäiseen, pay-as-you-go -eläkejärjestelmään.

The Biopolitics of Gender

This dissertation inquires into the relationship between gender and biopolitics. Biopolitics, according to Michel Foucault, is the mode of politics that is situated and exercised at the level of life. The dissertation claims that gender is a technology of biopower specific to the optimisation of the sexual reproduction of human life, deployed through the scientific and governmental problematisation of declining fertility rates in the mid-twentieth century. Just as Michel Foucault claimed that sexuality became a scientific and political discourse in the nineteenth century, gender has also since emerged in these fields. In this dissertation, gender is treated as neither a representation of sex nor a cultural construct or category of identity. Rather, a genealogy of gender as an apparatus of biopower in conducted. It demonstrates how scientific and theoretical developments in the twentieth century marshalled gender into the sex/sexuality apparatus as a new technology of liberal biopower. Gender, I argue, has become necessary for the Western liberal order to recapture and re-optimise the life-producing functions of sex that reproduce the very object of biopolitics: life. The concept of the life function is introduced to analyse the life-producing violence of the sex/sexuality/gender apparatus. To do this, the thesis rereads the work of Michel Foucault through Gilles Deleuze for a deeper grasp of the material strategies of biopower and how it produces categories of difference and divides population according to them. The work of Judith Butler, in turn, is used as a foil against which to rearticulate the question of how to examine gender genealogically and biopolitically. The dissertation then executes a genealogy of gender, tracing the changing rationalities of sex/sexuality/gender from early feminist thought, through mid-twentieth century sexological, feminist, and demographic research, to current EU policy. According to this genealogy, in the mid-twentieth century demographers perceived that sexuality/sex, which Foucault observed as the life-producing biopolitical apparatus, was no longer sufficiently disciplining human bodies to reproduce. The life function was escaping the grasp of biopower. The analysis demonstrates how gender theory was taken up as a means of reterritorialising the life function: nature would be disciplined to reproduce by controlling culture. The crucial theoretical and genealogical argument of the thesis, that gender is a discourse with biopolitical foundations and a technology of biopower, radically challenges the premises of gender theory and feminist politics, as well as the emancipatory potential often granted to the gender concept. The project asks what gender means, what biopolitical function it performs, and what is at stake for feminist politics when it engages with it. In so doing, it identifies biopolitics and the problem of life as possibly the most urgent arena for feminist politics today.

Koti keskellä kaupunkia : Keskusta lapsiperheen asuinalueena, esimerkkeinä Tukholma ja Helsinki

Families with children have traditionally moved to suburbs. In the last 20 years a modest counter process has however been recognized. Families with an urban lifestyle stay in the city centres. This study looks at the phenomenon through two cases, Stockholm and Helsinki. In the first case it has already been observed that the city centre has grown in popularity among families with children. Therefore it serves as a basis for the study and as well as a point of comparison. Stockholm’s city centre is expanding as new neighbourhoods have been built and are being planned. In the city centre of Helsinki the building of two large neighbourhoods for 30 000 inhabitants will start in a few years. The first aim of the study is to look closer at what has really happened in the city centre of Stockholm, why families choose to live there with their children and how the City of Stockholm has reacted to the change. The main sources of information are secondary sources, statistics and interviews with planners, politicians and experts in the field. The main object is to look at the situation in the city centre of Helsinki. Can a preference for urban residential environments be observed in Helsinki? What are the reasons for a family to choose the city centre as a living place? How does the everyday life of a family in the city centre appear? How are these families taken into account in the planning of the city? The main sources of information here are statistics, interviews with dwellers in the neighbourhood Kruununhaka and interviews with planners. In Stockholm the birth rate has grown constantly during the 2000s and is highest in the city centre. Some of the families still move elsewhere, but many of them do not. One of the most important reasons for living in the city centre is short working distances which give working parents more time with their children. Another reason is a preference of an urban, active lifestyle. Families prefer to live close to everything, childcare, schools, shops and entertainments. The popularity of the city centre among families with children has taken politicians and planners by surprise. Helsinki has not experienced a baby boom like Stockholm. However the negative changes in the birth rate have been more modest in the central areas than in the suburbs. Statistics show, that many families move away from the city centre as the children grow. Families who stay in the city centre especially appreciate closeness to public and private services and good public transportation which means that they are not dependent on using the car. Further they find that the city centre has a tolerant climate and is a safe and beautiful place to live in. The families enjoy the social life of the neighbourhood and feel that it makes a good climate to raise children in. However they are concerned with traffic safety and the lack of stimulus in the playgrounds of the neighbourhood parks. Two large neighbourhoods with homes for about 30 000 inhabitants are now planned in the former Port Districts in the city centre of Helsinki. The other one, Jätkäsaari has been planned to become an attractive alternative for families with children. Traffic safety has been one of the main objects for the planning. The other, Kalasatama, has been planned to attract all groups in society.