MALTHUSIAN CRISIS
Malthusian crisis refers to the ideas of Thomas Robert Malthus who argued that while populations grow exponentially the rate of increase in the food supply is much less. This creates a natural limit on populations and produces miserable conditions for society and inevitable mass starvation, unless of course individuals practice birth control. Malthus didn't advocate contraceptives, rather he advocated reducing sexual intercourse because of his background as a clergyman..
Thomas Robert Malthus, English economist, pioneer of the science of political economy and is known for his theory, as expressed in Essay on Population, that the rate of increase of the population tends to be out of proportion to the increase of its means of subsistence; controls on population (by sexual abstinence or birth control) are therefore necessary to prevent catastrophe.
The process of being "modern" requires the ability to govern one's reproductive behavior - what Prof. Greene calls the Malthusian Modern.
Prof. Greene discusses how the population apparatus is being re-built and US leadership re-defined by an alliance between neo-liberal and cultural forms of Malthusian reasoning. He documents the re-configuration of the Malthusian modern by investigating the rise of sustainable development, the feminist challenges to the population apparatus, the desire to contain human migrations, and the changes in US welfare policy during the 1990s.
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The global issue is the continuing need to produce more food given current deficiencies in particular regions and anticipated population increases averaging 80 million per annum up to 2015 followed by 50 million per annum to 2050. The challenge today is the same as that identified by the Reverend Thomas Malthus.
Malthus described a China in which early and universal marriage ensured high fertility and therefore high mortality. He contrasted this with Western Europe, where marriage occurred late and was far from universal, resulting in lower fertility and higher demographic responsiveness to economic circumstances.
Books on Malthusian crisis:
Malthusian
Worlds: U. S. Leadership and the Governing of the Population Crisis (Polemics)
by Ronald Walter Greene
Malthusian Worlds pulls together insights from cultural studies, rhetoric and continental
theory to explore the art of government. Ronald Walter Greene makes three interlocking
arguments. First, the process of being "modern" requires the ability to govern
one's reproductive behavior - what Greene calls the Malthusian Modern. Second, US
leadership in governing the population crisis between the years 1945 and 1975 was made
possible by the emergence of a governing apparatus dedicated to policing demographic
variables. This governing apparatus, the population apparatus, enlisted US leadership by
offering specific problems, forms of knowledge, institutions and proposals for meeting
both domestic and international objectives in and through the regulation of demographic
dynamics. Third, the population apparatus works on a global scale pulling together local
and national populations into its governing rationality building the spatial contours of
how we imagine the world. Greene concludes the book by discussing how the population
apparatus is being re-built and US leadership re-defined by an alliance between
neo-liberal and cultural forms of Malthusian reasoning. He documents the re-configuration
of the Malthusian modern by investigating the rise of sustainable development, the
feminist challenges to the population apparatus, the desire to contain human migrations,
and the changes in US welfare policy during the 1990s.
Land
Resources: on the edge of the Malthusian Precipice.(Review)(Brief Article) : An article
from: The Geographical Journal [HTML] - by Donald A. Davidson
A fundamental global issue is the continuing need to produce more food given current
deficiencies in particular regions and anticipated population increases averaging 80
million per annum up to 2015 followed by 50 million per annum to 2050. The challenge today
is the same as that identified by the Reverend Thomas Malthus.
This digital document is an article from The Geographical Journal, published by Royal
Geographical Society on June 1, 2000. The length of the article is 433 words. The page
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Citation Details
Title: Land Resources: on the edge of the Malthusian Precipice.(Review)(Brief Article)
Author: Donald A. Davidson
Publication: The Geographical Journal (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2000
Publisher: Royal Geographical Society
Volume: 166 Issue: 2 Page: 181
Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
One
Quarter of Humanity : Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000
by James Z. Lee, Feng Wang
2000 Allan Sharlin Memorial Award of the Social Science History Association, 2000 Otis
Dudley Duncan Award of the American Sociological Association. Malthus described a China in
which early and universal marriage ensured high fertility and therefore high mortality. He
contrasted this with Western Europe, where marriage occurred late and was far from
universal, resulting in lower fertility and higher demographic responsiveness to economic
circumstances. In reality, James Lee and Wang Feng argue, there has been effective
regulation of population growth in China—primarily as a consequence of collective
intervention. This collective culture underlies four distinctive features of the Chinese
demographic pattern—high rates of female infanticide, low rates of male marriage, low
rates of marital fertility, and high rates of adoption—that Lee and Wang trace from
1700 to today. These and other distinctive features of the Chinese demographic and social
system, they argue, led to a demographic transition in China different from the one that
took place in the West. "I congratulate the authors … This is one of the best
contributions to Chinese social and economic history we have seen in a long time."
—Peter C. Perdue, Journal of Asian Studies
James Z. Lee is Associate Professor of Chinese History at the California Institute of
Technology. Wang Feng is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California
at Irvine.
Malthusian Worlds