Global Inequalities, Development, and Population since 1945
July 26th, 2010
The history of population discourses and policies reflects, to some degree, also the history of the rise of global society in the second half of the 20th century. Few other policy issues of the post-World War II period can look back on such a decidedly transnational background. Population discourses and policies were a reflection of the scientization of the social, a phenomenon which predates the Second World War but which, under the impact of planning needs and technocratic modelling of societies, took on a dynamic of its own after 1945.
From the beginning, population discourses and policies were intertwined with strategies of socio-economic development. The neo-Malthusian dominance inherent in this discourse was far from predetermined. Rather, it was a reflection of strategic concerns and deliberations about the role of the West in the Cold War and vis-à-vis the emerging Global South. It rested on the assumption that inequality was a fact of history and culture.
Family planners assumed that people throughout the Global South wanted fewer children and would readily follow the prescriptions of family planners. Focusing on the collective impact of individual choices, they assumed that top-down approaches could swiftly change reproductive behaviour. In doing so, they gave priority to preventing births over health, education, and female empowerment. Population controllers questioned national sovereignties as their programs were designed to change national populations. But family planning raised fundamental questions about sovereignty in the bedroom as well, impacting on gender relations, notions of family and sexual preferences on the level of the individual. This turned family planning programs into frustrating experiences for those who designed them, and frustration lowered resistance to forms of compulsion. Where elites devised targets, incentives and disincentives, the freedom of choice of poor people became circumscribed. This as well was a form of inequality.
Family Planning began to shift its emphasis from the collective to the individual only in response to outright coercive actions and with the emergence of new actors, most notably feminists, from the late 1970s on. The current emphasis on reproductive choices, women’s empowerment, and maternal and child health may not mark the final stage in the history of family planning and population policies. As world population continues to grow, we will all be witnesses to possible changes in ideology, actor composition, and network structures of population policies.
Prof. Dr. Marc Frey ist Professor für internationale Geschichte an der Jacobs University Bremen. Er hat in Köln, Nijmegen und Calgary studiert und war u.a. am DHI in Washington, am Center for Advanced Study der Universität Singapur und an den Universitäten Köln, Bonn und Münster als Postdoctoral Fellow und Dozent tätig. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte umfassen die europäische Kolonisierung und Entkolonialisierung, die internationale Politik in Südostasien, auswärtige amerikanische Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert, die Geschichte der Entwicklungspolitik und die Zivilgesellschaft im Vergleich.