Malthus travels: A cultural history of the population crisis, 1945-1995

Abstract

This study maps the invention, circulation and regulation of the population crisis from 1945 to 1995. I conceptualize the population crisis as a complex field of practical reasoning occupied by different elements--human technologies, discourse strategies, institutions, and populations. The primary theoretical concern of this project is to describe how the population crisis emerged as a particular "governmental technology" dedicated to policing reproductive behaviors. As a cultural history, this study will analyze how the population crisis, as a policy formation, problematized and publicized the habits, morals and manners of specific populations in order to regulate population growth. This study tracks both an international and a national trajectory in the circulation of the population crisis. Internationally, I focus on the relationship between the United States and the United Nations in the creation of the population crisis. In particular, I focus on how the United States emerged as a leader in distributing demographic and family planning expertise as a means to invent, study and disarm the population bomb. Nationally, I focus on how the population formation targeted poor populations, African-American city populations, and middle class populations in the United States. I conclude this project by mapping the elements that are currently re-organizing the governing techniques of the population formation as Malthus prepares to travel to the twenty-first century.