Shaping demographies. The statistician, economist and demographer Robert René Kuczynski in Germany, USA and Greatbritain, 1890-1950

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sabine Schleiermacher
• Subject Area: History of Science
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 274717715

The project deals with the emergence of demography as an independent discipline between the 1890s and the 1950s. It aims to identify the various processes that paved the way for the institutionalisation of this emerging science by reconstructing the limits to and competition faced by the discipline of demography, which led a largely extra-mural existence up to the 1930s. The intention is to throw light on its cognitive, conceptual and methodological foundations as well as on the changes in thinking about population, in a nutshell on its dynamic shapings. Designed as a science history study operating at both a transnational and national comparative level, the project is conducted in the spirit of Latour's follow the actor and takes as its starting point the life and work of the economist, statistician and demographer, Robert René Kuczynski (1876-1947). From the 1920s his concept of the net reproduction rate made him a pioneer of the nascent demographies. Apart from their biographical relevance, Kuczynski s transnational and in some cases global networks provide diverse insights into the processes involved in shaping demographies in his time. The project comprises two independent studies which, taking Kuczynski as an example, investigate the shift in the dynamic networks of players and institutions in which population questions were tackled. The primary source of the studies is Robert René Kuczynski's estate in the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin, archived with the support of the German Research Foundation, which has valuable material relating to the issues addressed in the project. It is complemented with materials from various national and international archives.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants