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The United Nations has stated that the 1990s are the last possible decade for regulating fertility rates so that populations do not grow beyond the earth's capacity to sustain human life. Demographic experts are confounded by the persistence of high fertility in light of a number of circumstances that were expected to cause a decline, such as international dissemination of technical assistance and capital; improved health care conditions to lower the risk of infant mortality; increased opportunities to develop literacy in men and women; the democratization of governments; and several decades of liberal immigration and refugee policies favoring third-world nations. Population Politics brilliantly dissects the paradigm responsible for the counterproductive efforts of nations and international agencies. Virginia D. Abernethy, Ph.D., a renowned anthropologist, shows why support offered in the name of a "demographic transition" has been misdirected; why policies which do not encourage caution and restraint hamper the shift to lower fertility. Ireland, Indonesia, Cuba, China, Turkey, and Egypt are a few of the countries to which Dr. Abernethy looks, showing how economic, sociocultural, and agricultural factors have been both a cause of population growth and a way-of attempting to stabilize population size. The author stresses that motivation is the key to birth control and, using historical and cross-cultural data, hypothesizes that perception of limited resources is the chief stimulus. Renewed interest in limiting family size is seen in third-world countries, such as Sudan and Burma, where traditional patterns of delaying first births and increasing the interval between having one child and the next are reviving. Dr Abernethy proceeds with a fascinating critical perspective on population growth in the United States, relating it to twentieth-century industrialization, urbanization, fluctuations in the economy, and an "open door" immigration policy. All sectors of soc

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• Introduction to the Transaction Edition(p. xiii)
• Foreword to the 1993 Edition(p. xxxix)
• Preface to the 1993 Edition(p. xliii)
• I. Framing the Issues
• 1. Growth: Why We Love It(p. 3)
• 2. A Global Dilemma(p. 15)
• II. Why Growth Flies out of Control
• 3. Belief as Part of the Problem(p. 33)
• 4. Cultural Brakes(p. 47)
• 5. Where to Look for Balance(p. 61)
• 6. Which Incentives?(p. 73)
• 7. Development Alone May Spur Population Growth(p. 85)
• 8. Culture: Make or Break(p. 99)
• III. The Big Picture: Politics, Incentives, and Strategies
• 9. One-World: A Global Folly(p. 113)
• 10. Potlatching Twentieth-Century Style(p. 129)
• 11. Helping While Not Harming(p. 141)
• 12. Conservation, Incentives, and Ethics(p. 155)
• 13. Limiting Factors(p. 171)
• IV. America: Past and Future
• 14. Kissing the Blarney Stone and Other Tales(p. 185)
• 15. History Does Not Stop(p. 197)
• 16. The Path to Poverty(p. 213)
• 17. All Our People(p. 229)
• 18. The Carrying Capacity of the United States(p. 245)
• 19. And Away We Go(p. 259)
• 20. Let Freedom Ring(p. 279)
• 21. Taking Hold(p. 293)
• Bibliography(p. 311)
• Index(p. 331)

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CHOICE Review

Abernethy focuses exclusively on the role played by population growth in the degradation of the environment and the impoverishment of people. Rapid population growth in the Third World, she maintains, has come about through increases in the birth rate, disturbing a historic equilibrium with relatively low death rates that had produced constant or only very slowly growing populations. Although many will disagree with this argument and will find the evidence Abernethy marshals in support of it not persuasive, few will disagree that rapid population growth in the Third World is problematic in many ways. According to the author, high fertility in developing countries has been encouraged, mostly inadvertently, by policies of developed countries. The US population also continues to grow substantially as a result of increased immigration, both legal and illegal, and of the high fertility of immigrants. The solutions Abernethy offers--foreign aid focusing on "micro-loans" to peasants and grass-roots organizations instead of big projects, and much lower legal immigration to the US with much greater attention to the integrity of US borders--are sensible, given her analysis. The effectiveness of such solutions are questionable, however; the author has failed to take a broader perspective and to discuss other central causes of environmental abuse and impoverishment at home and abroad, most notable the behavior of transnational corporations. Some acknowledgement of the contributions of immigrants to US society would have muted the book's unfortunate xenophobic tone. General; undergraduate; graduate; faculty. K. Hadden; University of Connecticut

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Virginia D. Abernethy is professor emeritus of psychiatry (anthropology) at Vanderbilt Medical School.
Garrett Hardin is emeritus professor of human ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences and the University of California, Santa Barbara.