>From hoffmant@rastro.Colorado.EDU Tue Jan 31 10:02:42 1995 Received: from rastro.Colorado.EDU (rastro.Colorado.EDU [128.138.129.21]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.9/CNS-3.5) with ESMTP id KAA29582; Tue, 31 Jan 1995 10:02:41 -0700 Received: (from hoffmant@localhost) by rastro.Colorado.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.9/CNS-3.5) id KAA23674; Tue, 31 Jan 1995 10:07:56 -0700 Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 10:07:56 -0700 (MST) From: Hoffman Thomas To: Martha Gimenez cc: Multiple recipients of list Subject: production and reproduction In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I just finished reading Wally Secombe's 'Marxism and Demography: Household Forms and Fertility Regimes in the Western European Transition". I must add that this article really struck a cord with me. Secombe makes the observation that dialectical marxism tends to ignore the productive contributions of population change. He suggests that there seems to be a tendency to subordinate population to economy. Fertility relations seem to be conceptualized to be either in the social super structure or out the picture entirely. Secombe, however seems to conceptualize fertility relations to be interrelated with social base. He suggests that social production itself includes 1. production of the means of production, 2. production of subsistence, and 3. production of labor (i.e., fertility relations - in the context of their interplay with mortality and migration relations). Are fertility relations productive economically? Secombe seems to think so. It seems that his hypothesis is internally consistent and well grounded in historical materialism. Any thoughts? What is the rationale for conceptualizing reproduction as 'unproductive'? What are the theoretical implications of Secombe's conceptualization? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thomas Hoffman Department of Sociology University of Colorado