Shifting boundaries of fertility change in Southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

Anthropologists and demographers rely on distinctive methodologies and forms of evidence even while they share a common interest in explaining fertility change. This paper proposes a cultural anthropological approach that focuses on the process whereby meanings associated with practices and things are reinterpreted over time. Using the image of shifting boundaries of kinship relations, it examines changing interpretations of three fundamental aspects of social life—family land, marriage, and foster parenthood—in the Ekiti area of Southwestern Nigeria which suggest an attenuation of the mutual obligations of extended kin. While these reinterpretations have moral associations that legitimate practices supporting fertility decline, political and economic uncertainty may counter this process.