Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T04:23:38.377Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neo-Malthusianism and development: shifting interpretations of a contested paradigm*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2011

Marc Frey
Marc Frey
Affiliation:
Jacobs University Bremen, SHSS, Campus Ring 1, D-28759 Bremen, Germany E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article focuses on the connection between the ideology of neo-Malthusianism and development theory and practice from the mid 1940s to the present. First identified by a few demographic experts, population policies and family planning gradually turned into a global movement for the control of world population. From the beginning, population discourses and policies were intertwined with strategies of socioeconomic development. They were also a reflection of strategic concerns and deliberations about the role of the West in the Cold War and vis-à-vis the emerging Global South. Focusing on the collective impact of individual choices, population controllers assumed that top-down approaches could swiftly change reproductive behaviour. They gave priority to preventing births over health, education, and female empowerment. Family planning began to shift its emphasis from the collective to the individual only in response to outright coercive actions and with the emergence of new actors, most notably feminists, from the late 1970s on.

Keywords

global family planningglobal societyneo-Malthusianismpopulation control movementsocioeconomic development
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 75 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 ‘About UNFPA’, http://www.unfpa.org/public/about (consulted 10 February 2010).

2 United Nations Fund for Population Activities, State of world population: facing a changing world: women, population and climate, New York: UNFPA, 2009, pp. 60 and 2.

3 Derek D. Headey and Andrew Hodge, ‘The effect of population growth on economic growth: a meta-regression analysis of the macroeconomic literature’, Population and Development Review, 35, 2, 2009, pp. 221–48.

4 Cassen, Robert, Population and development: old debates, new conclusions, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994Google Scholar; Paul Demeny, ‘Demography and the limits to growth’, Population and Development Review, 14, 1988, Supplement: population and resources in Western intellectual traditions, pp. 213–44; Furedi, Frank, Population and development: a critical introduction, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997Google Scholar.

5 Judt, Tony, Postwar: a history of Europe since 1945, New York: Penguin, 2005, pp. 330–7Google Scholar; Livi-Bacci, Massimo, A concise history of world population, 3rd edition, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002Google Scholar; Scharping, Thomas, Birth control in China 1949–2000, London: Routledge Curzon, 2003, p. 4Google Scholar; Teitelbaum, Michael S. and Winter, Jay, The fear of population decline, Orlando, FL: Academic Press, 1985Google Scholar.

6 Peter M. Haas, ‘Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination’, International Organization, 46, 1, 1992, pp. 1–36.

7 I borrow the term from Susan Greenhalgh, ‘The social construction of population science: an intellectual, institutional, and political history of twentieth-century demography’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 38, 1, 1996, p. 27.

8 This is also reflected in the discussions leading up to the development of new indicators for measuring opportunities and qualities of life on a global scale, indicators no longer based on GNP per capita. The Human development index was first published by the United Nations Development Programme in 1990: see http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr1990/ (consulted 3 April 2010).

9 Warren C. Robinson and John Ross, ‘Family planning: the quiet revolution’, in Warren C. Robinson and John Ross, eds., The global family planning revolution: three decades of population policies and programs, Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2007, pp. 421–49. For a powerful critique of population control, see Connelly, Fatal misconception, pp. 370–86. See also Warwick, Donald P., Bitter pills: population policies and their implementation in eight developing countries, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982Google Scholar.

10 ‘World population: 1950–2050’, http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopgraph.php (consulted 10 February 2010); Cohen, Joel E., How many people can the earth support?, New York: Norton, 1995Google Scholar.

11 Chesler, Ellen, Women of valor: Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement in America, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007, pp. 195–6, 215–17, 371–95Google Scholar; Franks, Angela, Margaret Sanger’s eugenic legacy: the control of female fertility, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005Google Scholar; Thomson, Mathew, The problem of mental deficiency: eugenics, democracy, and social policy in Britain, c. 1870–1959, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Sanjam Ahluwalia, ‘Demographic rhetoric and sexual surveillance: Indian middle-class advocates of birth control, 1902–1940s’, in James H. Mills and Satadru Sen, eds., Confronting the body: the politics of physicality in colonial and post-colonial India, London: Anthem Press, 2004, pp. 183–202; Cleland, Wendell, The population problem in Egypt, Lancaster, PA: Science Press, 1936Google Scholar; Hodge, Joseph Morgan, Triumph of the expert: agrarian doctrines of development and the legacies of British colonialism, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2007, pp. 166–8Google Scholar; Rao, Mohan, From population control to reproductive health: Malthusian arithmetic, London: Sage Publications, 2004, pp. 19–23Google Scholar; Scharping, Birth control, p. 30; K. Srinivasan, Regulating reproduction in India’s population: efforts, results, and recommendations, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1995, pp. 15–25; Symonds, Richard and Carder, Michael, The United Nations and the population question, 1945–1970, London: Chatto and Windus, for Sussex University Press, 1973, pp. 3–29Google Scholar.

13 Malthus, Thomas Robert, An essay on the principles of population, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992 (first published 1798)Google Scholar.

14 Symonds and Carder, United Nations, pp. 33–66; Michael Ward, Quantifying the world: UN ideas and statistics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004, pp. 187–94 and passim.

15 Kingsley Davis, ‘The world demographic transition’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 237, 1945, pp. 1–11; Frank W. Notestein, ‘Population: the long view’, in Theodore W. Schulz, ed., Food for the world, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945, pp. 36–57; Marshall C. Balfour, Roger F. Evans, Frank W. Notestein, and Irene Taeuber, Public health and demography in the Far East, New York: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1950.

16 See John Caldwell and Chukuka Okonjo, ‘The population of tropical Africa’, Studies in Family Planning, 1, 29, 1968, pp. 10–12; Cooper, Frederick, Decolonization and African society: the labor question in French and British Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, Frederick, Africa since 1940: the past of the present, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 66–84, and passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andreas Eckert, ‘Exportschlager Wohlfahrtsstaat? Europäische Sozialstaatlichkeit und Kolonialismus in Afrika nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 32, 4, 2006, pp. 467–88.

17 Rao, From population control, pp. 24–30; Warren C. Robinson and Fatma H. El-Zanaty, ‘The evolution of population policies and programs in the Arab Republic of Egypt’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 15–20.

18 Dennis Hodgson, ‘The ideological origins of the Population Association of America’, Population and Development Review, 17, 1991, pp. 1–34; Kühl, Stefan, Die Internationale der Rassisten: Aufstieg und Niedergang der internationalen Bewegung für Eugenik und Rassenhygiene im 20. Jahrhundert, Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1997, p. 174Google Scholar.

19 Today, the IPPF is active in 170 countries. See http://www.ippf.org/en/ (consulted 15 March 2010).

20 Harr, John Ensor and Johnson, Peter J., The Rockefeller century, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988, p. 459Google Scholar.

21 Connelly, Fatal misconception, pp. 155–94.

22 Caldwell, John C. and Caldwell, Pat, Limiting population growth and the Ford Foundation contribution, London: F. Pinter, 1986, p. 1Google Scholar; Kathleen D. McCarthy, ‘From government to grassroots reform: the Ford Foundation’s population programs in South Asia, 1959–1981’, in Soma Hewa and Philo Hove, eds., Philanthropy and cultural context: Western philanthropy in South, East, and Southeast Asia in the 20th century, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997, pp. 129–56.

23 Greenhalgh, ‘Social construction’, pp. 34–8; Ehmer, Josef, Bevölkerungsgeschichte und historische Demographie 1800–2000, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Teitelbaum and Winter, Fear, passim.

24 Bernard Berelson, ‘The present state of family planning programs’, Studies in Family Planning, 1, 57, 1970, pp. 1–11; Caldwell and Caldwell, Limiting population growth, p. 141–2; McCarthy, ‘From government’, p. 129.

25 Koya, Yoshio, Pioneering in family planning: a collection of papers on the family planning programs and research conducted in Japan, Tokyo: Japan Medical Publishers, 1963, p. 16Google Scholar.

26 Connelly, Fatal misconception, pp. 138–41.

27 Koya, Pioneering, p. 26.

28 Bai Gao, ‘Globalization and the origins of Japanese developmentalism’, Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 19, 4, 2009, pp. 10–24.

29 Quoted in Scharping, Birth control, p. 29.

30 Warwick, Bitter pills, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 28–9.

31 For an English version of his 1949 French paper ‘Le “faux problem” de la population mondiale’, Population, 4, 3, 1949, pp. 447–63, see ‘Alfred Sauvy on the world population problem: a view in 1949’, Population and Development Review, 16, 4, 1990, pp. 759–74.

32 UNESCO, Report of the director-general on the activities of the Organization in 1948, Paris: Paris, 1948, p. 28, quoted in Symonds and Carder, United Nations, p. 54.

33 Coale, Ansley J. and Hoover, Edgar M., Population growth and economic development in low-income countries: a case study of India’s prospects, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958Google Scholar.

34 Philip Hauser and Otis Dudley Duncan, eds., The study of population: an inventory and appraisal, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1959.

35 Kuznets, Simon, Modern economic growth: rate, structure, and spread, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966, esp. chs. 1, 8, and 9Google Scholar. See also Nancy Birdsall, ‘Economic approaches to population growth’, in Hollis Chenery and T. N. Srinivasan, eds., Handbook of Development Economics, vol. 1, 2nd edition, Amsterdam: North Holland, 2007, p. 490.

36 The quote is taken from an obituary of William H. Draper, Jr. (1894–1974), in International Family Planning Digest, 1, 1, 1975, p. 16. The report of the committee was published as United States President’s Committee to study the United States Military Assistance Program: conclusions concerning the Mutual Security Program, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1959.

37 Kaufman, Burton, Trade and aid: Eisenhower’s foreign economic policy 1953–1961, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982, p. 182Google Scholar. See also Matthew Connelly, ‘Taking off the Cold War lens: visions of North–South conflict during the Algerian war of independence’, American Historical Review, 105, 3, 2000, pp. 739–69, for the rising concern about differential birth rates in the West and the rest during the 1950s.

38 Rostow, Walt Whitman, The stages of economic growth: a non-communist manifesto, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960Google Scholar. On the impact of modernization theory on the Kennedy Administration, see Gilman, Nils, Mandarins of the future: modernization theory in Cold War America, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003Google Scholar; and Latham, Michael E., Modernization as ideology: American social science and ‘nation building’ in the Kennedy era, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000Google Scholar. See also David C. Engerman and Corinna Unger, ‘Introduction: towards a global history of modernization’, Diplomatic History, 33, 3, 2009, pp. 375–85.

39 US National Archives, College Park, MD (henceforth USNA), State Department Records RG 59, Policy Planning Council, Box 118, Folder ‘Food and population’, George C. McGhee and Harlan Cleveland, ‘Population problem’, 31 August 1961.

40 Wolf Ladejinsky to Kenneth Iversion (Ford Foundation), undated [November 1954], in Louis J. Walinsky, ed., Agrarian reform as unfinished business: the selected papers of Wolf Ladejinsky, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 204–14.

41 USNA, RG 59, Policy Planning Council, Box 118, Folder ‘Food and population’, Intelligence Report, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, ‘Trends of population and gross national product by regional and political subdivisions’, 18 August 1961. See also John Sharpless, ‘Population science, private foundations, and development aid: the transformation of demographic knowledge in the United States, 1945–1965’, in Frederick Cooper and Randall Packard, eds., International development and the social sciences: essays on the history and politics of knowledge, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 176–202.

42 USNA, RG 59, Policy Planning Council, Box 118, Folder ‘Food and Population’, ‘Memorandum of conversation: secretary’s discussion of population problems with foundation executives’, 20 November 1962.

43 Neurath, Paul, From Malthus to the Club of Rome and back: problems of limits of growth, population control, and migrations, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994, p. 171Google Scholar.

44 http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19600111,00.html (consulted 25 February 2010).

45 Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, 4 January 1965, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=26907 (consulted 1 March 2010).

46 United Nations, World population: challenge to development: summary of the highlights of the World Population Conference, Belgrade 1965, New York: United Nations, 1966, p. 12.

47 Rainer, Bettina, Bevölkerungswachstum als globale Katastrophe: Apokalypse und Unsterblichkeit, Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot, 2005, pp. 173–82Google Scholar; Michel Thiery, ‘Pioneers of the intrauterine device’, European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, 2, 1, 1997, pp. 15–23.

48 Cohen, How many people?, p. 172.

49 Taek Il Kim and John A. Ross, ‘The Korean breakthrough’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 177–92.

50 Freedman, Ronald and Takeshita, John Y., Family planning in Taiwan: an experiment in social change, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969, pp. 351–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Yap Mui Teng, ‘Singapore: population policies and programs’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 201–19.

52 Amit Das Gupta, ‘Development by consortia: international donors and the development of India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Turkey in the 1960s’, Comparativ: Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und Vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, 19, 4, 2009, pp. 96–111, esp. pp. 104–5.

53 Terence H. Hull, ‘Formative years of family planning in Indonesia’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 235–56; Donald P. Warwick, ‘The Indonesian family planning program: government influence and client choice’, Population and Development Review, 12, 3, 1986, pp. 453–90.

54 Nicholas H. Wright, ‘Early family planning efforts in Sri Lanka’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 341–62.

55 Halvor Gille and M. C. Balfour, ‘National seminar on population problems of Thailand: conclusions of the seminar’, Studies in Family Planning, 1, 4, 1964, pp. 1–5; Allen G. Rosenfield, Chitt Hemachudha, Winich Asavasena, and Somsak Varakamin, ‘Thailand: family planning activities 1968–1970’, Studies in Family Planning, 2, 9, 1971, pp. 181–92; Allan G. Rosenfield and Caroline J. Min, ‘The emergence of Thailand’s national family planning program’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 221–33.

56 Warwick, Bitter pills, p. 16.

57 Ibid., pp. 11–12, 83–4, and 108–13.

58 Donald F. Heisel, ‘Family planning in Kenya in the 1960s and 1970s’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 393–417; Warwick, Bitter pills, pp. 13–15.

59 John C. Caldwell and Fred T. Sai, ‘Family planning in Ghana’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 379–92.

60 Rosanna Ledbetter, ‘Thirty years of family planning in India’, Asian Survey, 24, 7, 1984, here pp. 737 and 739.

61 Matthew Connelly, ‘Population control in India: prologue to the emergency road’, Population and Development Review, 32, 4, 2006, p. 645.

62 Oscar Harkavy and Krishna Roy, ‘Emergence of the Indian national family planning program’, in Robinson and Ross, Global family planning revolution, pp. 307–8.

63 Connelly, ‘Population control’, pp. 629, 643, and 656.

64 Connelly, Fatal misconception, p. 319; Harkavy and Roy, ‘Emergence’, p. 310.

65 Bernard Berelson, ‘The present state of family planning programs’, Studies in Family Planning, 1, 57, 1970, pp. 1–11.

66 Kingsley Davis, ‘Population policy: will current programs succeed?’, Science, 158, 3802, 10 November 1967, p. 734.

67 Ehrlich, Paul R., The population bomb, New York: Ballantine Books, 1968Google Scholar; Garrett Hardin, ‘The tragedy of the commons’, Science, 162, 3859, 13 December 1968, p. 1248; Donella H. Meadows et al., The limits to growth: a report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind, New York: Universe Books, 1972.

68 Pearson, Lester B., Chairman, Partners in development: report of the Commission on International Development, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969Google Scholar; Deborah Barrett and John David Frank, ‘Population control for national development: from world discourse to national policies’, in John Boli and George M. Thomas, eds., Constructing world culture: international non-governmental organizations since 1875, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999, pp. 198–221.

69 ‘Declaration on world population: the world leaders’ statement’, Studies in Family Planning, 1, 26, 1968, pp. 1–2.

70 Donaldson, Peter J., Nature against us: the United States and the world population crisis, 1965–1980, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990, pp. 48–51Google Scholar; Sunniva Engh, ‘From northern feminists to southern women: Scandinavian population aid to India’, in Pharø, Helge and Fraser, Monika Pohle, eds., The aid rush: aid regimes in northern Europe during the Cold War, Oslo: Oslo Academic Press, 2008, p. 275Google Scholar; John Sharpless, ‘World population growth, family planning, and American foreign policy’, Journal of Policy History, 7, 1995, pp. 72–102.

71 Symonds and Carder, United Nations, pp. 157–72, 175–87.

72 Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, and Frederic Lapeyre, UN contributions to development thinking and practice, Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2004, pp. 188–92.

73 McNamara, Robert S., The McNamara years at the World Bank: major policy addresses of Robert S. McNamara 1968–1981, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981, p. 34 (speech to the University of Notre Dame, 1 May 1969)Google Scholar. See also Devesh Kapur, John P. Lewis, and Richard Webb, The World Bank: its first half century, vol. 1: History, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1997, p. 695.

74 United Nations, Report of the United Nations World Population Conference, 1974, Bucharest, 19–30 August 1974, New York: United Nations, 1974. See also Connelly, Fatal misconception, p. 310; Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive rights and wrongs: the global politics of population control, revised edition, Boston, MA: South End Press, 1995, pp. 110–12.

75 United Nations, General Assembly, 6th special session, Declaration for the establishment of a new international economic order, 1 May 1974, A/RES/S–6/3201, http://www.un-documents.net/s6r3201.htm (consulted 15 March 2010).

76 Donaldson, Nature against us, pp. 125–9.

77 Government of India Planning Commission, Fourth five year plan 1969–74: draft, New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1969, p. 310.

78 Srinivasan, Regulating reproduction, pp. 36–7; Marika Vicziany, ‘Coercion in a soft state: the family-planning program of India, part I: the myth of voluntarism’, Pacific Affairs, 55, 3, 1982, pp. 373–402.

79 Harkavy and Roy, ‘Emergence’, p. 310.

80 Marika Vicziany, ‘Coercion in a soft state: the family-planning program of India, part II: the sources of coercion’, Pacific Affairs, 55, 4, 1982, pp. 557–92. See also P. N. Dhar, Indira Gandhi, the ‘emergency’, and Indian democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 323–40 and passim.

81 Emma Tarlo, Unsettling memories: narratives of the emergency in Delhi, London: C. Hurst & Co Publishers, 2001, p. 176.

82 Engh, ‘From northern feminists’, pp. 274–81; Jolly, Emmerij, and Lapeyre, UN contributions, p. 192.

83 Scharping, Birth control, pp. 32 and 49. On population discourses and policies in China, see also Susan Greenhalgh, ‘State–society links: political dimensions of population policies and programmes, with special reference to China’, in J. F. Phillips and J. A. Ross, eds., Family planning programmes and fertility, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 277–98; Susan Greenhalgh and Edwin A. Winkler, Governing China’s population: from Leninist to neo-liberal biopolitics, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005; Greenhalgh, Susan, Just one child: science and policy in Deng’s China, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lee, James Z. and Feng, Wang, One quarter of humanity: Malthusian mythology and Chinese realities, 1700–2000, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999Google Scholar; Tyrene White, China’s longest campaign: birth planning in the People’s Republic, 1949–2005, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006.

84 White, China’s longest campaign, p. 136.

85 Amartya Sen, ‘Population: delusion and reality’, 22 September 1994, http://www.marathon.uwc.edu/geography/malthus/sen_NYR.htm (consulted 15 March 2010).

86 The United States resumed funding family planning organizations in the mid 1990s on a modest scale. The George W. Bush administration, with its principled opposition to abortion, made it very difficult for organizations to apply for US government funds.

87 Hartmann, Reproductive rights, p. ix; Robinson and Ross, ‘Family planning’, p. 435.

88 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, 5–13 September 1994, Cairo, http://www.iisd.ca/cairo.html (consulted 20 March 2010).