ABSTRACTS.

The article presents the abstracts of the papers which appeared in this issue of the journal. Regarding the article "Structure and Behavior in the Social Demography of Africa," the abstract focuses on the role of culture in determining demographic behavior in sub-Saharan Africa has attracted increasing attention. But in theorizing about "culture," demographers have tended to draw on the work of British structural functional anthropologists, who saw behavior as determined by social norms that were in turn generated by underlying social structures, functional in nature. This has led to a number of features: an emphasis on macrolevel associations; a working assumption that behavior is governed by norms; the analysis of change solely in terms of external forces; and the use of generalized descriptions of both ideas and behavior in African societies. For "Consequences of Son Preference in a Low-Fertility Society: Imbalance of the Sex Ratio at Birth in Korea," abstract states that many demographers and population planners have considered son preference in Asian countries to be a major barrier to reducing fertility. Some of these countries, such as South Korea and China, however, have recently achieved replacement-level fertility, in spite of their strong adherence to son preference.