This book addresses major population and development issues: fertility and reproductive health, migrations, gender, education, poverty and inequalities. To that aim it revisits and considerably enlarges Kingsley Davis' 1963 theory of change and response, using interdisciplinary methodologies. On the basis of four decades of field research (1985-2015), it questions the rationality of the actors, how culture shapes socio-demographic behaviours, in a context of modernity and globalisation. More specifically, it casts new light on the interactions of individuals, families, networks and local communities with the State and its population policy.

After graduating in social anthropology and demography, Véronique Petit became a Professor of demography at the University Paris Descartes. She belongs to the Centre Population and Development. Specialized in demography of developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research works concerned mainly two fields research: reproductive health (contraception, female genital mutilations, population policies) and international migrations (remittances, return migrations, mental health of migrants). She is the chief editor of the major francophone revue on international migrations, the Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales. She also contributes to promote the new field of anthropological demography. She had already published with Springer a book about the stake of interdisciplinarity in social sciences: Counting Population. Understanding societies (2013).