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

Author
McCann, Carole R. (Carole Ruth), 1955- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Εdition
1st edition.
Published/​Created
Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2017]
Description
xi, 314 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Stokes Library - Wallace Hall (SPR) HB851 .M296 2017 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Series
    Feminist technosciences [More in this series]
    Summary note
    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. -- Amazon.com.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-298) and index.
    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.
    ISBN
    • 9780295999098 ((hardcover ; : alk. paper))
    • 0295999098 ((hardcover ; : alk. paper))
    • 9780295999104 ((pbk. ; : alk. paper))
    • 0295999101 ((pbk. ; : alk. paper))
    LCCN
    2016014273
    OCLC
    946461757
    Statement on language in description
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