Home > Events > Cambodian History and Social Demography: A Dialog in Three Acts

This presentation discusses how a demographic approach can shed light on the history of Cambodia, with reference to the Khmer Rouge period (1975-79), and how in the aftermath of that period, the unique experience of Cambodia provides quasi-experimental conditions to test long-standing questions in demography and in sociology.

In the first example, demographic reconstruction is used to assess the death toll of the Khmer Rouge regime and the proportion of deaths that seem attributable to “unnatural causes” as opposed to a general decline in living conditions. These results are then compared with the extant estimates historians have derived using different approaches.

In the second example, Cambodian mortality crisis and subsequent baby boom are analyzed and brought to bear on the question of whether changes in mortality directly or indirectly induce reproductive changes—a core issue in the debate over the rationale for international family planning programs.

The third example addresses the determinants of marital stability and in particular how much spousal choice matters. To gain leverage on this issue, the prevalence of forced marriages under the Khmer Rouge regime is first assessed and the marital trajectories of cohorts married before, during, and after the Khmer Rouge period are then compared.

Patrick Heuveline is a candidate for a faculty position in Sociology and Southeast Asian Studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Demography from the University of Pennsylvania (1997) and has been at the University of Chicago in the Sociology Department and the Population Research Center since 1998. He is co-author of the textbook Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes (with Samuel H. Preston and Michel Guillot) (2000).

A student of social and demographic changes, Heuveline is interested in modeling population dynamics and in assessing the demographic impact of shocks to demographic equilibria. His current research is moving more toward an understanding of the socio-demographic consequences of exogenous shocks, with a special emphasis on the family as an adaptive institution. With the support of a W.T. Grant Scholars Award, Heuveline is developing an international comparative study of welfare states, family structures, and children wellbeing to study how the effects of family structure on children outcomes may depend on the nature of the State-Family alliance with respect to child welfare.

His main field work continues to be in Cambodia, where in collaboration with Royal University of Phnom Penh and with support from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, he has set up the Mekong Island Population Laboratory (MIPopLab). Data collection in MIPopLab started in 2000 and has continued biannually to the present. These data have allowed Heuveline to follow his work on the mortality crisis during the Khmers Rouges with a retrospective and prospective study of family reconstruction in post-Khmer-Rouge Cambodia.

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Special Instructions

Parking in UCLA's Lot 2 costs $8.

For more information please contact

Barbara Gaerlan
Tel: 310-206-9163
cseas@international.ucla.edu
www.international.ucla.edu/cseas/

Sponsor(s): Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Sociology