Demographic Understandings: Exploring the Role of Meaning in Political Demography

• In Event: Politics and Population Processes

Abstract

Political Demography, a small but growing subfield in demography, focuses on the relationship between demography and politics. To date, scholars have focused on the impact of demographic processes on politics and political systems. Despite numerous contributions, political demographers have paid little attention to what we theorize as “demographic understandings.” Demographic understandings refer to the contextually specific ensemble of ideas, beliefs, and assumptions that people hold about “demography” and population processes. Research adjacent to political demography, such as work on “innumeracy” or ethnoracial population change, suggests that demographic understandings influence partisan affiliations, intergroup solidarities, and collective identities. Building on this literature, we propose a conceptual framework to help analysts examine what individuals and publics understand and feel about demographic matters. Operating at the macro, meso, and micro levels, we analytically distinguish between six objects: demographic science, demographic discourse, demographic ideologies, demographic estimations, demographic judgments, and demographic emotions. We argue this framework will help analysts better track and theorize how knowledge and perceptions about demography shape the political—and mediate—the contingent political consequences of demographic processes.

Authors

• Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz, University of California-Berkeley

• Dori Taylor Carter, University of California-Berkeley

• Jessica Law, University of California-Berkeley