The Dictionary of Human Geography

fertility Reproductive performance, or the
number of live births. Along withmortality
andmigration, it is one of the three compon-
ents of the balancing equation and, as such, an
important influence upon the growth, compos-
ition and distribution of populations (seedem-
ography). Unlike mortality and morbidity,
which have been the subject of long-standing
interest inmedical geographyand geograph-
ies ofhealth and health care, and migration,
similarly investigated inpopulation geog-
raphy, fertility (andfecundity) continues to
receive scant attention within geography
(Boyle, 2003), despite such trends as the emer-
gence of negative population growth rates
fuelled by low fertility, increasingly complex
householdforms and a growing emphasis
upon social reproduction in the discipline.
Research on geographical variations in
fertility makes use of two types of measures.
Period measures focus on events that occur
between a starting and ending date, and
include thecrude birth rate(the number of
births in a year for every 1,000 persons in a
population). cohort measures focus on
events that occur to a particular group of indi-
viduals, such as those born or married in the
same year, and include thetotal fertility rate,
which represents the number of live births that
a woman currently aged 15 would expect by
the time she reaches age 49 and assuming that
current age-specific fertility rates remain con-
stant. The fact that a large number of coun-
tries exhibit total fertility rates well below
the replacement level of 2.1 has stimulated
debate on the fertility and demographic
transition in particular, and the changing
role ofchildrenand adults in society more
generally (Greenhalgh, 1995; Waldorf and
Franklin, 2002).
Research on the politics of reproduction
exploresdiscoursessurrounding family plan-
ning, reproductive health and reproductive
rights movements, particularly as they impacted
upon policy recommendations from successive
meetings of the International Conference for
Population and Development, and the geogra-
phical nature ofsocial constructionssur-
rounding, for example, teen pregnancy, child-
birth and maternal mortality (Fernandez-Kelly,
1994;Grimes,1999;Underhill-Sem,2001).ab

Suggested reading
Bongaarts (2002); Boyle (2003).

feudalism A term used in the analysis of
pre-capitalist societies, especially those of
medieval Europe, but also Japan under the

rule of warlords from the twelfth to the nine-

teenth centuries. Feudalism has a wide range

of meanings, from a legal focus on the military

obligations imposed through the concept of a

fief (see below) to a more comprehensive,

quintessentially political and economic char-

acterization of feudalism as a specificmode

of productionorsocial formation. The

increasing scope of the definition owes much

to a growing interest in comparative history

and, in particular, to studies of the geograph-

ically variable relationships between the

decline of feudalism and the rise of agrarian

capitalism (Hilton, 1976; Kula, 1976;

Martin, 1983; Dodgshon, 1987; Glennie,

1987). But this has also prompted a fear that,

outside history andhistorical geography,

‘‘‘feudalism’’ seems to have become a general

catch-all term denoting almost anything in the

pre-modern period; it is as though all societal

relationships, economies and politics of the

medieval period can be defined simply by this

legal term that describes the action of lords

collecting a surplus through a sort of military

protection racket’ (Harvey, 2003b, p. 152).

Such a prospect has been complicated by

more recent analyses that claim to identify

a resurgent feudalism within latemodernity,

a sort of ‘medieval modernity’ predicated on a

particular combination of fiefdom and freedom

and the production of fractured and competing

sovereignties associated with the aggressive

advance ofneo-liberalismin both the global

north(alSayyad and Roy, 2006; Zafirokski,

2007) and thesouth(cf. Murray, 2006).

In its classical sense, feudalism comprises

two distinct social groups. The first is a group

of direct producers (broadly peasants) who

maintain direct, which is to say non-market,

access to the means of production (land, tools,

seed-corn and livestock) even though they

may not own them (especially land). This

group is subject to politico-legal domination

by a second group ofsocial superiors, who form

a status hierarchy headed by a monarch or

sovereign (seesovereign power). The sover-

eign ultimately owns all the land, but land

tenure is effectively decentralized through

grants of land to feudal lords in return for their

political and military support. In such a sys-

tem, social relations of production are thus

not defined primarily throughmarkets,asin

capitalism, and the means by which a surplus

is extracted from the direct producers is differ-

ent from systems likeslavery.

The key social relationships in European

feudalism were vassalage and serfdom.

Vassalage was an intra-elite relationship by

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FEUDALISM