IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v52y2001i12p1827-1841.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"The tongue is venomous": perception, verbalisation and manipulation of mortality and fertility regimes in rural Mali

Author

Listed:
  • Castle, Sarah

Abstract

Demographic theory frequently assumes that pre-transitional populations adopt fatalistic attitudes to fertility and mortality. Fertility decline is said to require a "pro-active" mentality incorporating a newly conceived idea of numeracy about children and a new-found awareness by individuals of where they stand in relation to demographic norms. Non-numeric responses to questions about desired family size are interpreted as meaning that women are unable to conceptualise their ideal number of children and are unaware of their demographic environment. However, ethnographic evidence from the Malian Fulani will show how women accurately appraise their mortality and fertility regimes and how they actively seek to manipulate them via a series of ritual behaviours. It is described how women do think numerically about demographic outcomes but are reluctant to verbalise this numeracy as it is believed that it will incur supernatural risks. The implications for demographic research of the widespread belief in the danger of verbalising numbers of children are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Castle, Sarah, 2001. ""The tongue is venomous": perception, verbalisation and manipulation of mortality and fertility regimes in rural Mali," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 52(12), pages 1827-1841, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:52:y:2001:i:12:p:1827-1841
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(00)00300-2
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Brunson, Jan, 2020. "Tool of economic development, metric of global health: Promoting planned families and economized life in Nepal," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
    2. Susan Watkins & Eliya Msiyaphazi Zulu & Hans-Peter Kohler & Jere Behrman, 2003. "Introduction to "Research on Demographic Aspects of HIV/AIDS in Rural Africa"," Demographic Research Special Collections, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 1(1), pages 1-30.
    3. Thomas K. LeGrand & Magali Barbieri, 2002. "The Possible Effects of Child Survival on Women's Ages at First Union and Childbirth in Sub-Saharan Africa," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 18(4), pages 361-386, December.
    4. Bove, Riley & Valeggia, Claudia, 2009. "Polygyny and women's health in sub-Saharan Africa," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 21-29, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:52:y:2001:i:12:p:1827-1841. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.