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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 May 2014
Twenty–one collaborators and I recently have championed the use of demographic insights in the reconstruction of African history. The advocacy, however, does not mean that we endorse all uses to which demography has been put in the recent literature. We all recognize the delicacy of transferring methods from one discipline to another. In this essay I would like to suggest five pitfalls into which some distinguished scholars have fallen as a caution for further research. Some of the authors of course, may not believe them pit-falls at all, but the production of history requires debates on methods as well as fact and theory.
Before, embarking on this critique, however, let me propose a framework which relates primarily to one of the three major components of demography, the study of mortality. The analysis of mortality in Africa really involves three nested questions which researchers inevitably address either implicitly or explicitly: why do organisms die? why and how do people die? and why and how do people die in Africa? In the course of explaining how demographers answer these questions, I will illustrate the methodological errors which I be¬lieve fellow historians have committed.
Death is the inevitable outcome of life; it comes to all organisms, large and small. The causes of death and disease often work in combination. Some organisms are born defective, genetically unable to function in the same way as others of their species. Others, although properly equipped, experience accidents or shortages of food. Those which have survived to maturity experience aging, a process by which the biological mechanisms which have enabled creatures to repair themselves and to fight off enemies, cease functioning, and death is the final outcome. All these causes of death can occur without the intervention of other creatures. The earth, however, is filled with a variety of organisms which are capable of killing one another. Members of some species kill each other, but the most common causes of death are interspecific, involving the relationships of prédation and parasitism.
My thanks to Doug Ewbank, Harold Bershady, Lee Cassanelli, Joe Miller, and Jan Vansina for reducing, if not entirely eliminating, my own errors in this piece and to Randy Packard and Stefano Fenoaltea who correct me even when we are in disagreement. This paper was presented to the 1991 meeting of the Canadian Association of African Studies.
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