Fertility, the Demographic Revolution and Legal Consciousness in Comparative Perspective: Islamic, Hindu, Halakhic and Buddhist Normative Orders

Viva Hammer, Australian National University

The long demographic revolution from high mortality and high fertility to low mortality and low fertility has touched virtually every community on earth. The historical origins of the fertility decline remain elusive, and the continuing decline of fertility to extremely low levels in diverse contexts is a conundrum. In this paper I offer an alternative approach to these unanswered questions, looking at the culture of reproduction and birth control in non-European, non-Christian contexts. What role do written and unwritten law have on women's decisions to have or not have children? I draw on women's testimonies on their childbearing decisions over a 50 year period in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I focus on the legal consciousness around the law of reproduction in women's cultural contexts and how it has evolved since World War 2.

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 Presented in Session 131. Islamic Political Thought, Sovereignty, and Alternative Modernities