Population, Reproduction and Fertility in Melanesia

Human biological fertility was considered a important issue to anthropologists and colonial administrators in the first part of the 20th century, as a dramatic decline in population was observed in many regions. However, the total demise of Melanesian populations predicted by some never happened; on the contrary, a rapid population increase took place for the second part of the 20th century. This volume explores relationships between human fertility and reproduction, subsistence systems, the symbolic use of ideas of fertility and reproduction in linking landscape to individuals and populations, in Melanesian societies, past and present. It thus offers an important contribution to our understanding of the implications of social and economic change for reproduction and fertility in the broadest sense. Stanley Ulijaszek is a University Lecturer in Human Ecology and Nutritional Anthropology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. He co-authored Nutritional Anthropology (1993) and wrote Human Energetics in Biological Anthropolgy (1995), and is editor of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Human Growth and Development (1998). He is the editor of Homo. Journal of Human Comparative Biology and Economics and Human Biology.