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Demography 381
The new audio-visual means of cornrnunication
82. In addition to the changes of residence which number perhaps three or four
on an average during the life of an individual, and the more or less daily jour-
neys to and fro because people nowadays often live at a distance from their
place of work, there is a kind of shifting about occasioned by the particular type
of work. For instance, the intellectual has to go to his library, the engineer or
business man to consult with professional colleagues, the scientist to take part
in conferences, etc.
The progress already achieved or envisaged in transmitting information by
what are called audio-visual media should alter the type of such comings and
goings and make them less frequent. It is now technically possible, thanks to
television, to organize a ‘meeting’ of industrialists scattered about between, say,
New York, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Tokyo, London and Paris without them
having to go outside their respective offices. Soon it wil be possible to do the
same for zoo persons. There seems to be no limit. No doubt such ‘meetings’
will be considerably lacking in human warmth; but as they wil not cost much,
it wil be possible to hold them far more frequently and engage the most suitable
persons to take part in them so that one thing will balance another.
Another technical invention already brought out, but as yet in little use, is
going to upset completely the traditional method whereby one sets out to obtain
the information required. It wil soon become current practice, without stirring
a step, to address an inquiry to a machine and receive the answer at home - and
a printed answer at that.
83. Lastly, seasonal migratory movements, whether connected with work or
holidays, are becoming ever greater and greater, and wil make their effects felt
more and more in the social and economic life of a country.
V. DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH AND SOCIOLOGY
84. When dealing with human ecology, we were already in the realm of sociol-
ogy. As Jean Stoetzel has said, ‘Ecology is on the borderline between the
science of population and that of social phenomena; (it) constitutes the natural
bridge between these two branches of knowledge’. Sociology contributes to
demography its theories, principles and methods. We give below a few examples
of sociological theories serving as a fulcrum for demographic research.
85. On several occasions we have been led to emphasize the voluntary aspect
of demographic events: a birth, a marriage, a migration are more and more the
result of some individual decision. In the case of a death, there is a mingling of
individual decision and collective decision, without it being possible to see very
clearly as yet which wil prevail. Indeed, there is a branch of sociology exclu-
sively occupied with ‘decision’. It discerns in the various circumstances in which
a choice is necessary the use of standard procedures which are applicable to de-
mographic events, and this broadening of the notion of choice should help the
demographer to understand the variations which he notes in his findings.