Caroline Bledsoe
Biographic Data
| ID | 106181 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Caroline Bledsoe |
| GIVEN NAMES | Caroline |
| FAMILY NAME | Bledsoe |
| SIGNATURE | BLEDSOE C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Museum of Indian Arts and Culture |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 658 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Legacies, logics, labors of love
We write to note the passing of world-renowned Africanist and economic anthropologist Jane Isabel Guyer, who died in Davis, California, on January 17, 2024, from complications from dementia. Born in Dunoon, Scotland, on New Year's Eve in 1943, she had just turned 80. Jane earned a PhD in anthropology from the University of Rochester in 1972 and went on to teach at Boston University, Harvard, Northwestern, and, finally, Johns Hopkins, from which s…
Fertility and Culture
Janneke Verheijen, Balancing Men, Morals and Money
Family Reunification Ideals and the Practice of Transnational Reproductive Life among Africans in Europe
family, migration
Back to Africa
This paper examines the phenomenon of West African parents living in Europe and North America who send their older children back home: from places of high immigrant aspiration to those of hardship and privation. Drawing on a project on West African immigration to Europe and on previous field studies in Africa, we conclude that West African immigrants fearing the consequences of their children's indiscipline in the West, where racism and hostility…
Introduction
Sociocultural anthropology's encounters with large public data sets
This article asks how socioculturally inspired questions can be illuminated by exploiting large demographic data sets. Focusing on people represented in the annually updated Spanish Municipal Register (the Padrón Municipal) who report themselves as citizens of countries outside Spain, it treats demographic numbers as texts that can speak to us as plainly as words about something as challenging as the dynamics of identity and belonging
High fertility Gambians in low fertility Spain
Based on an analysis of the Spanish census and the January 1, 2005 municipal register and on exploratory fieldwork in Catalonia, this paper combines ethnography and demography, in conjunction with current Spanish reunification law, to examine the dynam
Explaining Family Change and Variation
Twenty years ago, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) issued a request for proposals that resulted in the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), a unique survey valuable to a wide range of family scholars. This paper describes the efforts of an interdisciplinary group of family demographers to build on the progress enabled by the NSFH and many other theoretical and methodological innovations. Our work,…
Reproduction at the Margins
One of the most compelling demographic questions in contemporary Europe has been whether immigrant populations will bring their youthful age pyramids to help support Europeâ s subfertile, aging populations. But how do immigrants envision their own repro
Contingent Lives
Most women in the West use contraceptives in order to avoid having children. But in rural Gambia and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, many women use contraceptives for the opposite reason - to have as many children as possible. Using ethnographic and demographic data from a three-year study in rural Gambia, Contingent Lives explains this seemingly counterintuitive fact by juxtaposing two very different understandings of the life course: one is …
Contingent Lives
A Plague of Paradoxes
Africa is the place where international concerns about HIV/AIDS first drew intense geographic scrutiny. Some investigators focused on rising reported incidence rates in different parts of the continent. Others saw the spread of the [End Page 862] disease as an extension of Western colonialism and postindependence efforts to subordinate African countries, producing epidemics of malaria and tuberculosis when men had to migrate for work. To yet othe…
Contingent Lives
The compound as a locus of fertility management
To explain the persistence of high fertility and low contraceptive prevalence in rural sub-Saharan Africa, demography has relied heavily on a framework that emphasizes institutional barriers to individual behavioural change. Such an approach assumes that in traditional societies, institutions such as polygyny exert a uniform effect on fertility for all women and hence, actors have little agency in fertility decision-making. One consequence of thi…
Fertility and the Male Life-Cycle in the Era of Fertility Decline
This volume challenges the orthodox position on two of the main themes in fertility transition studies: the inevitable link between fewer children and quality of life and the focus on women as the sole important objects of study. In an era of unprecedented fertility decline, there is increasing concern about the lessening worldwide role that men play in the upbringing of children. The immense worldwide variation in the timing and sequencing of a …
Reproductive Mishaps and Western Contraception
Caroline Bledsoe, Fatoumatta Banja, Allan G. Hill, Reproductive Mishaps and Western Contraception: An African Challenge to Fertility Theory, Population and Development Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 15-57
In Pursuit of History
Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Two much-needed contributions to the literature BL an analysis of the dynamics of marriage and partnership-formation in Africa This is a perennially lively and interesting subject in Africa, the most complex of continents. Many of the studies are based on careful field research, making this a rich and original source of information on this diverse and rapidly changing area. BL a combination of anthropological theorizing with demographic case stud…
Contraception and "Natural" Fertility in America
Caroline Bledsoe, Contraception and "Natural" Fertility in America, Population and Development Review, Vol. 22, Supplement: Fertility in the United States: New Patterns, New Theories (1996), pp. 297-324
Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Actes de la conférence organisée par le Anthropology and demographic committee présidé par Gilles Pison, sous la direction de l'International union for the scientific study of population, Paris, 1988
The Significance of Schooling
Dividing the Commons
‘Children are like young bamboo trees ’
Like most great intellectual figures, Thomas Malthus left a puzzling legacy. Depending on which version of the Essay we read, Malthus 's preoccupation with over-population can brand him as a stern prophet of doom, a testy critic of humanitarian aid, a hopeful child of the Enlighten ment, or a nai”ve, sheltered parson. Nowhere does his credibility evaporate faster than in his dismissal of Sub-Saharan Africa, sight un seen, as a 'savage and neglect…
No Success Without Struggle
Reproductive Mishaps and Western Contraception
Caroline Bledsoe, Fatoumatta Banja, Allan G. Hill, Reproductive Mishaps and Western Contraception: An African Challenge to Fertility Theory, Population and Development Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 15-57
Constructing Natural Fertility
In 1992 in 41 villages in the North Bank region of rural Gambia researchers interviewed 2979 15-54 year old women to examine the means by which this population maintains natural fertility birth intervals. Only 3.3% had ever had formal schooling. The total fertility rate was 7.5. Criteria the women used in their decision making process about contraception included effectiveness confidentiality speed with which fecundity returns after the practice …
The effect of child fostering on feeding practices and access to health services in rural Sierra Leone
Transformations in Sub-Saharan African Marriage and Fertility
Among populations that value high fertility, marital practices often play important roles in regulating fertility. This article interprets ethnographic and demographic data to examine changes in contemporary African marriage. It shows that female education exacerbates inequities between de facto polygynous women who previously would have lived together, shared household resources, and acknowledged each other as cowives. These new forms of polygyn…
Introduction
Arabic Literacy and Secrecy Among the Mende of Sierra Leone
This article examines the relationship between Arabic literacy and secrecy among the Mende of Sierra Leone. It argues that the acquisition of Arabic literacy, primarily associated with Islamic scholarship, has created a new domain of secrecy and esoteric knowledge, distinct from the traditional Mende secret societies. This literacy-based secrecy serves multiple functions, including reinforcing religious authority, facilitating communication withi…
The reinterpretation of Western pharmaceuticals among the Mende of Sierra Leone
Back to Africa
This paper examines the phenomenon of West African parents living in Europe and North America who send their older children back home: from places of high immigrant aspiration to those of hardship and privation. Drawing on a project on West African immigration to Europe and on previous field studies in Africa, we conclude that West African immigrants fearing the consequences of their children's indiscipline in the West, where racism and hostility…
The political use of Sande ideology and symbolism
Recent studies of the women's Sande society of West Africa have argued that the Sande seeks to produce symbolically pure adult women as well as bonds of female solidarity. This paper shows that Sande elite often side with elite men and exploit subordinate women. Crucial Sande symbolism merges differentiating features between the sexes. Conclusions are drawn about strategic uses of the Sande ideology by the elite in the context of its regional pol…
The cultural transformation of Western education in Sierra Leone
The introduction of European schooling into West Africa in the late eighteenth century set in motion a profound cultural transformation. The Mende of Sierra Leone, the target of some of the earliest educational experiments in West Africa, began to reinterpret the Western ideals about the free dissemination of knowledge that were imposed on them. Focusing less onwhatis taught thanhowit is taught, the article shows that the Mende have transformed i…
Literacy, Society and Schooling
Part I. Matters of Value: 1. On defining literacy Suzanne de Castell, Allan Luke, and David MacLennan 2. The functions and uses of literacy Shirley Brice Heath 3. The properties, purposes, and promotion of literacy John Wilson 4. Literacy and the education of the emotions Robert C. Solomon Part II. Matters Historical and Social: 5. The legacies of literacy: continuities and contradictions in western society and culture Harvey J. Graff 6. Models o…
Marrying Well
Explaining Family Change and Variation
Twenty years ago, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) issued a request for proposals that resulted in the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), a unique survey valuable to a wide range of family scholars. This paper describes the efforts of an interdisciplinary group of family demographers to build on the progress enabled by the NSFH and many other theoretical and methodological innovations. Our work,…
Reproduction at the Margins
One of the most compelling demographic questions in contemporary Europe has been whether immigrant populations will bring their youthful age pyramids to help support Europeâ s subfertile, aging populations. But how do immigrants envision their own repro
Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Two much-needed contributions to the literature BL an analysis of the dynamics of marriage and partnership-formation in Africa This is a perennially lively and interesting subject in Africa, the most complex of continents. Many of the studies are based on careful field research, making this a rich and original source of information on this diverse and rapidly changing area. BL a combination of anthropological theorizing with demographic case stud…
High fertility Gambians in low fertility Spain
Based on an analysis of the Spanish census and the January 1, 2005 municipal register and on exploratory fieldwork in Catalonia, this paper combines ethnography and demography, in conjunction with current Spanish reunification law, to examine the dynam
Women's Marital Strategies among the Kpelle of Liberia
The study examines ways in which women and men in rural Kpelle communities use marriage and filial ties to improve their status and acquire power. It argues that both men and women try to maintain independence from superiors when economically possible, but try to keep other people bound to them in ties of obligation. Because men use female production and reproduction to enhance their own positions, they prefer to marry. Conversely, women marry on…
The Manipulation of Kpelle Social Fatherhood
The jural model of kinship promulgated by Radcliffe-Brown and his followers has come under increasing question in recent years. This model posits that people are born or married into certain kin positions from which behavior and most social relationships are fairly straightforward consequences. It is important to examine the rules and norms pertaining to kinship but the role they actually play in determining social action is more problematic than…
The Politics of Aids and Condoms for Stable Heterosexual Relations in Africa
Although there has been considerable attention to increasing mortality rates and economic problems in areas of Africa hardest hit by AIDS, in this paper I examine the epidemic's impact on stable heterosexual relations. By identifying salient cultural themes pertaining to marriage and fertility, I examine people's emerging responses to policy injunctions to use condoms and limit their sexual partners. I draw policy conclusions for the fate of chil…
Sociocultural anthropology's encounters with large public data sets
This article asks how socioculturally inspired questions can be illuminated by exploiting large demographic data sets. Focusing on people represented in the annually updated Spanish Municipal Register (the Padrón Municipal) who report themselves as citizens of countries outside Spain, it treats demographic numbers as texts that can speak to us as plainly as words about something as challenging as the dynamics of identity and belonging
Contraception and "Natural" Fertility in America
Caroline Bledsoe, Contraception and "Natural" Fertility in America, Population and Development Review, Vol. 22, Supplement: Fertility in the United States: New Patterns, New Theories (1996), pp. 297-324
Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Actes de la conférence organisée par le Anthropology and demographic committee présidé par Gilles Pison, sous la direction de l'International union for the scientific study of population, Paris, 1988
Women in Accra
Women's Marital Strategies among the Kpelle of Liberia
The study examines ways in which women and men in rural Kpelle communities use marriage and filial ties to improve their status and acquire power. It argues that both men and women try to maintain independence from superiors when economically possible, but try to keep other people bound to them in ties of obligation. Because men use female production and reproduction to enhance their own positions, they prefer to marry. Conversely, women marry on…
Slavery in Africa
Women in Accra
The Manipulation of Kpelle Social Fatherhood
The jural model of kinship promulgated by Radcliffe-Brown and his followers has come under increasing question in recent years. This model posits that people are born or married into certain kin positions from which behavior and most social relationships are fairly straightforward consequences. It is important to examine the rules and norms pertaining to kinship but the role they actually play in determining social action is more problematic than…
La Femme Africaine Dans la Societe Precoloniale
The political use of Sande ideology and symbolism
Recent studies of the women's Sande society of West Africa have argued that the Sande seeks to produce symbolically pure adult women as well as bonds of female solidarity. This paper shows that Sande elite often side with elite men and exploit subordinate women. Crucial Sande symbolism merges differentiating features between the sexes. Conclusions are drawn about strategic uses of the Sande ideology by the elite in the context of its regional pol…
The reinterpretation of Western pharmaceuticals among the Mende of Sierra Leone
Arabic Literacy and Secrecy Among the Mende of Sierra Leone
This article examines the relationship between Arabic literacy and secrecy among the Mende of Sierra Leone. It argues that the acquisition of Arabic literacy, primarily associated with Islamic scholarship, has created a new domain of secrecy and esoteric knowledge, distinct from the traditional Mende secret societies. This literacy-based secrecy serves multiple functions, including reinforcing religious authority, facilitating communication withi…
Marrying Well
The effect of child fostering on feeding practices and access to health services in rural Sierra Leone
Literacy, Society and Schooling
Part I. Matters of Value: 1. On defining literacy Suzanne de Castell, Allan Luke, and David MacLennan 2. The functions and uses of literacy Shirley Brice Heath 3. The properties, purposes, and promotion of literacy John Wilson 4. Literacy and the education of the emotions Robert C. Solomon Part II. Matters Historical and Social: 5. The legacies of literacy: continuities and contradictions in western society and culture Harvey J. Graff 6. Models o…
Transformations in Sub-Saharan African Marriage and Fertility
Among populations that value high fertility, marital practices often play important roles in regulating fertility. This article interprets ethnographic and demographic data to examine changes in contemporary African marriage. It shows that female education exacerbates inequities between de facto polygynous women who previously would have lived together, shared household resources, and acknowledged each other as cowives. These new forms of polygyn…
No Success Without Struggle
The Cultural Politics of Religious Change
A study of the Sanoyea Kpelle in Liberia, based on American Lutheran missionary accounts and other unpublished documents
The Politics of Aids and Condoms for Stable Heterosexual Relations in Africa
Although there has been considerable attention to increasing mortality rates and economic problems in areas of Africa hardest hit by AIDS, in this paper I examine the epidemic's impact on stable heterosexual relations. By identifying salient cultural themes pertaining to marriage and fertility, I examine people's emerging responses to policy injunctions to use condoms and limit their sexual partners. I draw policy conclusions for the fate of chil…
The cultural transformation of Western education in Sierra Leone
The introduction of European schooling into West Africa in the late eighteenth century set in motion a profound cultural transformation. The Mende of Sierra Leone, the target of some of the earliest educational experiments in West Africa, began to reinterpret the Western ideals about the free dissemination of knowledge that were imposed on them. Focusing less onwhatis taught thanhowit is taught, the article shows that the Mende have transformed i…
‘Children are like young bamboo trees ’
Like most great intellectual figures, Thomas Malthus left a puzzling legacy. Depending on which version of the Essay we read, Malthus 's preoccupation with over-population can brand him as a stern prophet of doom, a testy critic of humanitarian aid, a hopeful child of the Enlighten ment, or a nai”ve, sheltered parson. Nowhere does his credibility evaporate faster than in his dismissal of Sub-Saharan Africa, sight un seen, as a 'savage and neglect…
Constructing Natural Fertility
In 1992 in 41 villages in the North Bank region of rural Gambia researchers interviewed 2979 15-54 year old women to examine the means by which this population maintains natural fertility birth intervals. Only 3.3% had ever had formal schooling. The total fertility rate was 7.5. Criteria the women used in their decision making process about contraception included effectiveness confidentiality speed with which fecundity returns after the practice …
The Significance of Schooling
Dividing the Commons
Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Two much-needed contributions to the literature BL an analysis of the dynamics of marriage and partnership-formation in Africa This is a perennially lively and interesting subject in Africa, the most complex of continents. Many of the studies are based on careful field research, making this a rich and original source of information on this diverse and rapidly changing area. BL a combination of anthropological theorizing with demographic case stud…
Contraception and "Natural" Fertility in America
Caroline Bledsoe, Contraception and "Natural" Fertility in America, Population and Development Review, Vol. 22, Supplement: Fertility in the United States: New Patterns, New Theories (1996), pp. 297-324
Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Nuptiality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Actes de la conférence organisée par le Anthropology and demographic committee présidé par Gilles Pison, sous la direction de l'International union for the scientific study of population, Paris, 1988
Reproductive Mishaps and Western Contraception
Caroline Bledsoe, Fatoumatta Banja, Allan G. Hill, Reproductive Mishaps and Western Contraception: An African Challenge to Fertility Theory, Population and Development Review, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 15-57
Sociology (38 works) · Political science (23 works) · Demography (15 works) · Gender Studies (15 works) · Geography (15 works) · Population (14 works) · Fertility (12 works) · History (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Economics (10 works)