| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

James Z. Lee and Cameron D. Campbell. Fate and Fortune in Rural China: Social Organization and Population Behavior in Liaoning 1774–1873. (Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy, and Society in Past Time, number 31.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Pp. xxi, 280. $49.95.

Historical demography began as a search for accurate numbers—birth rates, death rates—whereby the lives of ordinary people in the past could be compared with ours today. Following T. B. Malthus, it soon added economic concepts: how did feast or famine influence the likelihood of dying or being born? However, as James Z. Lee and Cameron D. Campbell's masterful book on the peasants of Daoyi district in rural China from 1774 to 1873 demonstrates, it has now moved far beyond its origins in statistics and economics to consider more difficult and profound social questions. Can the underlying principles of a society—what used to be called "culture"—influence such mundane features as fertility and mortality? Is human behavior universal, or does culture matter? Can the way households are constructed (in Daoyi, the multiple-family household is both ideologically and statistically dominant) influence outcomes—the likelihood of marrying, or having more or fewer children, of living to old age—for individuals located in different positions in such households? Culture does matter: demographic behavior reflects social organization. . . .

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