FRSG Books

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<NEW> Low Fertilities in the Past and Present: Studies in Compositional Demography, Yuliiya Hilevych and Philip Kreager, eds. London: The British Academy, 2026. Available online here.

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                                     Sustained population studies of fertility over the last two centuries have come to question the                                          extent to which trends in low fertility maybe understood as universal. Improved knowledge of                                            variations within countries and between communities has revealed heterogeneity in reproductive                                      behaviours at sub-national levels - whether before, during, or after the so-called 'fertility transition'.                     Population studies have also come to give more attention to the role of structural inequalities,                                          including around family, class, gender, economy, and health, and of people's diverse

                                     and changing reproductive strategies that underpin varying low fertilities at sub-national levels.                                        In moving beyond the 'transition' paradigm, research has opened up to demographic inquiry a                                          rich and intriguing array of human life-course diversity.

                                     

                                     Low Fertilities in the Past and Present develops compositional demography approaches to                                              address the advancements in sub-national variations. It brings together studies in anthropology, demography, history, and sociology, that have together developed an analytical lens for examining the low fertility phenomenon not as a mere average but as a composite of different reproductive behaviours and regimes. The volume is among the first to collect historical patterns of low fertilities and their underlying structural conditions in a long-term comparative perspective. It is also
the first to detail comprehensively the compositional demography approach, which can be also applied to the study of various demographic phenomena around fertility, mortality, ageing, migration, and other population issues.

 

The Anthropological Demography of Health, Véronique Petit, Kaveri Qureshi, Yves Charbit and Philip Kreager (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.

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                                     This book provides an integrative framework for the anthropological demography of                                                           health, a field of interdisciplinary population research grounded in ethnography and in critical                                           examination of the social, political, and economic histories that have shaped relations                                                       between peoples. The field has grown from the 1990s, extending to a remarkable range of                                               key human and policy issues, including: genetic disorders; nutrition; mental health; infant,                                                 child and maternal morbidity; malaria; HIV/AIDS; disability and chronic diseases; new                                                       reproductive technologies; and population ageing. Collaboration with social, medical, and                                                 demographic historians enables these issues to be situated in the evolution of
                                     institutional structures and inequalities that shape health and care access. Understanding                                                fertility levels and trends has widened beyond parity and contraception to the many life course                                         risks and alternative healing systems that shape reproductive health. By going beyond                                                     conventional demographic and epidemiological methods, and idealised macro/micro-level units,                                       the anthropological demography of health places people’s health-seeking behaviour in a compositional demography based on ethnographic observation of group formation and change over time, and of
variance between what people say and do. It tracks family and community networks; class, linguistic, and religious groups; sectoral labour and market distributions; health and healing specialisms; and relations between these bodies and with groups controlling local and national governments. The approach enables examination of how local cultures and experience are translated formally into measures on which survey and clinical programmes rely, thus testing the empirical adequacy of such translations, and leading to revision of concepts of risk and governance.

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FRSG/Berghan Book Series

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FRSG has an active publication series with Berghahn Books entitled Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality. The series

includes 57 volumes, as of 2026. The entire series can be accessed by clicking the link below.

Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality

General Editors:
Soraya Tremayne, Founding Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Associate, Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford
Marcia C. Inhorn, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University
Philip Kreager, Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group, and Research Associate, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford

Understanding the complex and multifaceted issue of human reproduction has been, and remains, of great interest both to academics and practitioners. This series includes studies by specialists in the field of social, cultural, medical, and biological anthropology, medical demography, psychology, and development studies. Current debates and issues of global relevance on the changing dynamics of fertility, human reproduction and sexuality are addressed.

 

Three of the books published in the series have received nominations for the CAR Prize (Committee for the Anthropology of Reproduction) at the American Association of Anthropologists (AAA).

 

The CAR Prize 2010 and 2012 were won, respectively, by Volume 12: Reconceiving the Second Sex: Men, Masculinity and Reproduction, edited by Marcia C. Inhorn, Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, Helene Goldberg and Maruska la Cour Mosegaard, and Volume 18: Assisting Reproduction, Testing Genes, edited by Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli and Marica C. Inhorn.