Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

386 Jean Bourgeois-Pichat
100. The term ‘population’ has a very general sense. Its use is often limited to
human populations. But the statistician employs it for any group of objects.
Among all these ‘populations’, he distinguishes those which renew themselves
by a process of arrivals and departures. This is the case with human populations,
but there are many others besides, such as animal populations. We can also
refer to vegetation populations - for instance a forest - and to microbial popula-
tions. We can even talk of populations of objects: a series of types of electric
light bulbs is a well-known example; the books in a library is another. The
methods used by the demographer for studying the evolution of human popula-
tions can be applied to other sorts of population. But we must all the same take
care when analytical methods are thus extended. Certain peculiarities attached
to human populations are connected with the form of the fertility and mortality
functions of the human species. When populations other than human popula-
tions are considered, the arrival and departure functions will, as a rule, be
different from such fertility and mortality functions. It would be extremely
useful, therefore, if the demographer could distinguish very clearly in his studies
between, on the one hand, what is true for all self-renewing populations, and
on the other hand, what is true only for human populations.
IOI. W e remarked at the beginning of this chapter how one of the essential
characteristics of demographic events was that of being events as part of history.
This characteristic is not peculiar to demographic events. It is found in all the
human sciences, but in the case of demography, it lies at the very core of the
matter and cannot be eluded. All phenomena which form part of an historical
process share this common characteristic, namely, that they unfold in successive
stages in such a way that it is impossible for them to reach a given stage without
having gone through all the preceding stages. A whole method of analysis has
been built round this characteristic. There are, however, many phenomena
unconnected with demography to which the same analysis can be applied. We
mention, for example, the circulation of products in a market economy; the
circulation of vehicular traffic from place to place; the building of a succession
of barrages along a river; the tax on increased nominal value, etc. - all subjects
in which the demographer can collaborate.
102. We have a recent example of the results to be derived from such col-
laboration, namely research into historical demography. In many countries,
long before the establishment of a civil registration system, marriages, births
and deaths were registered by the religious authorities in what are called in
Europe parish registers. These documents, which are very numerous, had not,
until quite recently, been systematically used. Demographers have found means
for dealing with them and have applied those means with such success that they
are now used by hi~torians.~5
103. The human being has remarkable powers of adaptation, but these should
not be developed too rapidly. If environmental conditions change too quickly
they give rise to tensions which can endanger the very existence of the social