Disease and Demography in the Americas: The Subject as Seen through the Book

Abstract

The impact of European contact on Native American health and demography is now perhaps a more popular subject than ever before. An examination of the recent compilation, Disease and Demography in the Americas, reveals some of the shortcomings of research in this field, including ineffective borrowing of methodology and data. In the study of Native American health and depopulation, an excessive emphasis on being scientific - in particular on quantification and narrowly defined research problems - is reflected in a disregard for the larger sociopolitical and historical contexts of the phenomena under consideration, and of the research itself. This disregard both compromises and impoverishes the study of contact in the Americas.