In Tibetan Transitions, Geoff Childs brings together data from four case studies to develop a comprehensive account of the traditional Tibetan demographic system and its modern transition to low fertility achieved through family planning. The cases are drawn from the past and present and from different corners of the Tibetan world. Their sources include a 1958 household register from Kyirong, in southern Tibet, supplemented by interviews with nearly two hundred people listed in the register; Childs's own ethnographic research in Sama, a culturally Tibetan community in northern Nepal; recent surveys and interviews that he and others conducted with Tibetans living in exile in South Asia; and census data and reports produced by others on the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Childs uses the first two cases to illustrate premodern demographic conditions and the latter two to examine processes of change in the present. The comparison rests on the assumption that societies of Tibetan culture share fundamental similarities, despite the different political and economic systems under which their members live and diversity in family systems.
In his first chapter, Childs introduces the four cases, discusses the sources of data on which his analyses rest, and reviews the literature on Tibetan marriage, family, and demography. The second chapter considers theoretical issues, most notably the epistemological and methodological divide between anthropology and demography and recent efforts at disciplinary synthesis. Childs then lays out his frameworks for analysis. These include, from demography, the “proximate determinants,” or the social and biological factors affecting fertility, demographic transition theory, and the controversial distinction between “natural” and “controlled” fertility; from anthropology, the distinction between culture and agency; and from both fields, notions of population regulation and family systems. This choice of analytical tools is guided by his stated goal of “build[ing] a more culturally informed model of reproductive behaviors” (p. 27).
Childs devotes one chapter to each case, in which he describes social practices that affect fertility. These include polyandry in some regions, monogamy in others, comparatively late commencement of childbearing, religious celibacy, and nonmarriage for a large segment of the population. The comparisons reveal considerable local sociocultural and demographic diversity, which should not be surprising given the time and distance separating these four societies. While Childs's efforts to do justice to the data are exemplary and certainly will benefit scholarship, the level of detail may complicate readers' efforts to keep track of key information and to grasp which features of family and demographic systems are quintessentially Tibetan. The third chapter, on Kyirong, is likely to be of great interest to Tibetan specialists, but it is particularly difficult to follow because of its reliance on literal translations from the household registers.
The four societies are grouped along two major poles. Kyirong and Sama have high fertility, moderated by the effects of polyandry, nonmarriage, and religious celibacy. Tibetans in the TAR and exiles in South Asia have experienced fairly typical demographic transitions, involving falling rates of mortality, increased life expectancy, and a brief spike in rates of fertility followed by a rapid decline (p. 239). Childs explains these changes with careful and clear presentations of relevant demographic data. He attributes the decline in fertility among Tibetans in the TAR to state policies, economic factors—principally limited resources—and decreases in child mortality. For exiles, the reasons lie in economic modernization, changing women's roles, and concerns about the costs of raising and educating children.
The sixth chapter, on the TAR, includes an evenhanded and comprehensive summary of claims and counterclaims concerning family planning and population in Tibet. Childs criticizes the ways in which China has used population data to rationalize its intervention into Tibetans' reproductive lives and draws attention to careless scholarship on the demography of preliberation Tibet and population growth in the present. Similarly, he criticizes the ways in which the exile community has used dubious statistics to support claims of genocide committed against the people of Tibet (pp. 211–15).
The concluding chapters summarize key findings and discuss the value of combining demographic and anthropological approaches. Anthropology makes sense of the ways in which family-building strategies are embedded in local culture, social practices, and political-economic contexts and highlights how individuals engage with their culture as active agents, in making decisions about marriage, reproduction, and family planning. Demographic frameworks draw attention to macro-level phenomena, such as the causes and consequences of rapid fertility transitions currently under way in Asia. Childs finds that no single theory is adequate to explain the path that the demographic transition has taken among Tibetan populations, particularly for the TAR, where economic development and the rise of secular education, which typically precede fertility declines, are lacking. He closes his book with a discussion of the impacts of sustained low fertility and Han Chinese migration into the TAR on Tibetan society, including problems for monastic recruitment and the possibility that Tibetans will become a minority in their homeland by the next century (p. 269).
This groundbreaking book more than succeeds at its stated aim: explaining one of the most far-reaching changes that Tibetan populations have experienced in recent decades. In so doing, it covers an array of topics that are likely to be of interest to social scientists with expertise in anthropology and demography and to specialists in Tibetan studies and the wider South and Central Asian regions.
