The construction of over-and under-population: some critical reinterpretation of the population problem

Abstract

Sustainability, steady state economics, and deliberate control of reproduction are serious issues. Serious, not just because of the severity of the environmental problema they address and the sweeping social and economic changes their implementation seems to require, but because these issues call for serious conceptual and empirical work to understand the dynamics of unsustainability, economic growth, and population increase, given that any new social order will be constructed through interventions within these dynamics. There is a substantial body of research in social analysis of environmental change upon which this work should build. Moreover, like all discourses, the prevailing discussions of sustainability and so on, usually expressed in very urgent and serious terms, invite interpretation, that is, analysis of the deeper conceptual structures and rhetorical strategies employed. This is particularly so given that the idea of progress informs Westem intellectual discourse in many ways and the consistent incorporation of limits would constitute a conceptual revolution. We intend this critique of neo-Malthusian Population discourse to stimulate progress in understanding the dynamics of socio-environmental change and in interpreting environmental discourse.