Selective modernization and self -transformation: The third demographic transition in Guadeloupe, French West Indies

According to French demographers, the attainment of "replacement level fertility" at a rate very near to that of metropolitan France signified that Guadeloupeans were at last "modern." Yet, in the 1950s, attaining French modernity meant not only limiting reproduction but also more fully assimilating French culture and social values, and emulating the Eurowestern model of family formation. During this era, although Guadeloupeans appeared to have embraced the French assimilationist agenda, in reality, they selected those aspects of French "modernity" which suited their cultural specificity and context-specific needs. Thus, while both the French and Guadeloupeans hail themselves as "modern," a gulf exists between their versions of modernity.;This study critiques the dichotomized concepts of modern and traditional as they are used to describe and explain procreative practices and family formation. It argues that not only are such concepts inappropriate for typologizing family formation and fertility behavior, but fail to encapsulate the complex dynamics contained within cultural and political-economic analyses. It argues that the introduction of modern patterns of consumption along with the denigration of "traditional" values and customs, the promulgation of French values and culture, labor migration to metropolitan France, and the introduction of birth control knowledge and technology interacted and were integral to the speed and thoroughness of Guadeloupe's fertility decline. Despite Guadeloupeans' ambition to become equal and assimilated French citizens, several components of the modernization process were ignored by local inhabitants, among them family nuclearization, and that the processes surrounding family formation are separable from rather than linked to changes in fertility. Given that from a Eurowestern perspective nuclear families and low fertility remain theoretically linked, this distinction is of key importance in the investigation of fertility transition in Guadeloupe and in other "third world" territories. It is further suggested that such transitions may, in fact, represent a third model of "The Demographic Transition."...