Figuring the population bomb : gender and demography in the mid-twentieth century / Carole R. McCann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McCann, Carole R. (Carole Ruth), 1955- author.

Series:

Feminist technosciences

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Population.

Population policy.

Population--Social aspects.

Birth control--History--20th century.

Birth control.

Birth control--Political aspects.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xi, 314 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2017]

Summary:

Figuring the Population Bomb traces the genealogy of twentieth-century demographic "facts" that created a mathematical panic about a looming population explosion. This narrative was popularized in the 1970s in Paul Ehrlich's best-selling book The Population Bomb, which pathologized population growth in the Global South by presenting a doomsday scenario of widespread starvation resulting from that growth. Carole McCann uses an archive of foundational texts, disciplinary histories, participant reminiscences, and organizational records to reveal the gendered geopolitical grounds of the specialized mathematical culture, bureaucratic organization, and intertextual hierarchy that gave authority to the concept of population explosion. These demographic theories and measurement practices ignited the population "crisis" and moved nations to interfere in women's reproductive lives, Figuring the Population Bomb concludes that mid-twentieth century demographic figures remain authoritative to this day in framing the context of transnational feminist activism for reproductive justice. Book jacket.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Matters of vital importance : demography and the mid-twentieth-century population imaginary

Rereading Malthus : population and masculine modernity

Narratives of exclusion, mechanisms of inclusion : demographic boundary work

Remaking Malthusian couplings for the contraceptive age

Demographic transitions and modern masculinities

"Second sight" and "fictitious accuracy to the numbers"

Conclusion: demographic convictions and sound knowledge

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780295999098

0295999098

9780295999104

0295999101

OCLC:

966384388