The Reproductive Revolution

Este texto fue publicado en 2009 por The Sociological Review. Rogamos que, a efectos de divulgación, docencia y cita bibliográfica se acuda a la publicación impresa (u online de la propia revista) y la cita sea esta: MacInnes, J., Pérez Díaz, J. (2009), "The reproductive revolution" The Sociological Review 57 (2): 262-284. Su versión html puede encontrarse en esta dirección:http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122368561/HTMLSTART Quienes estén interesados en ampliar la información sobre nuestra Teoría de la Revolución Reproductiva pueden visitar la página web siguiente: http://www.ieg.csic.es/jperez/pags/RRweb/RRweb.htm También encontrarán en este mismo repositorio otra publicación con unaexposición en castellano de las mismas ideas y publicada en la REIS bajo el título “La tercera revolución de la modernidad: la reproductiva”.We suggest that a third revolution alongside the better known economic and political ones has been vital to the rise of modernity: the reproductive revolution, comprising a historically unrepeatable shift in the efficiency of human reproduction which for the first time brought demographic security.As well as highlighting the contribution of demographic change to the rise of modernity and addressing the limitations of orthodox theories of the demographic transition, the concept of the reproductive revolution offers a better way to integrate sociology and demography. The former has tended to pay insufficient heed to sexual reproduction, individual mortality and the generational replacement of population, while the latter has undervalued its own distinctive theoretical contribution, portraying demographic change as the effect of causes lying elsewhere. We outline a theory of the reproductive revolution, review some relevant supporting empirical evidence and briefly discuss its implications both for demographic transition theory itself, and for a range of key social changes that we suggest it made possible: the decline of patriarchy and feminisation of the public sphere, the deregulation and privatisation of sexuality, family change, the rise of identity, ‘low’ fertility and ‘population ageing’.Peer reviewe

A “New” General Theory of Population Ageing

The main theories of population ageing based on recent data on human longevity, life expectancy, morbidity changes, disability trends and fall in mortality show co-existing contradictory tendencies in disability and functioning. These contradictions reflect differences in geographic, cultural, socio-economic, political and medical contexts, for instance:• an increase in the survival rates of sick persons which would explain the expansion of morbidity and/or disability that is now taking place in Taiwan,• control of the progression of chronic diseases which would explain the subtle equilibrium between the fall in mortality and the increase in disability currently observed in the U.K.,• an improvement in the health status and health behaviours of the new cohorts of old people which would explain the reduction in morbidity and/or disability now found in France, Switzerland and the U.S. The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance (2004) 29, 667–678. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0440.2004.00309.x