Barbarian hordes: the overpopulation scapegoat in international development discourse

Abstract

Despite sustained critique of a neo-Malthusian focus on ‘overpopulation’, the issue continues to resurface regularly within international development discourse, particularly with respect to ‘sustainable’ development in relation to growing environmental security concerns. This suggests that the issue defies purely rational evaluation, operating on a deeper psychodynamic register. In this paper we therefore analyse the population question as a ‘scapegoat’, in the psychoanalytic sense of a fantasmatic construction concealing the gap between the symbolic order of international development and its persistent failure in practice. By conjuring the age-old image of animalistic barbarian hordes breeding inexorably and therefore overflowing their Third World confines to threaten the security – and enjoyment – of wealthier nations, the overpopulation bogeyman helps to displace attention from systemic issues within the political economy of development, namely, the futility of pursuing sustainable development within the context of a neoliberal capitalism that characteristically exacerbates both economic inequality and environmental degradation.

Keywords:

• development
• psychoanalysis
• population
• environment
• capitalism

Notes

1. Malthus, An Essay on The Principle of Population.

2. Duden, “Population”; and Escobar, Encountering Development.

3. See Fletcher, “Bodies Do Matter”; and Fletcher, Romancing the Wild for more detailed explanation of this synthesis.

4. For example, De Vries, “Don’t Compromise your Desire for Development!”; Fletcher, “The Art of Forgetting”; Kapoor, “Participatory Development”; and Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development.”

5. De Vries, “Don’t Compromise your Desire for Development!”; and Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development.”

6. Helstein, “‘That’s Who I Want to Be’,” 277.

7. Easterly, The White Man’s Burden.

8. For example, Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century; Gunder Frank, Latin America; Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism; Smith, Uneven Development; and Wallerstein,“The Rise and Future Demise.”

9. Fletcher, “What Are We Fighting For?,” 54.

10. For example, Sachs, The Development Dictionary; Escobar, Encountering Development; Escobar, Territories of Difference; Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine; and Li, The Will to Improve.

11. Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development,” 274.

12. See De Vries, “Don’t Compromise your Desire for Development!”; Fletcher, “The Art of Forgetting”; Kapoor, “Participatory Development”; and Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development.”

13. Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development.”

14. For example, Gibson-Graham, “Surplus Possibilities”; and Gibson-Graham, A Post-capitalist Politics.

15. De Vries, “Don’t Compromise your Desire for Development!,” 26.

16. Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development,” 275.

17. De Vries, “Don’t Compromise your Desire for Development!,” 29.

18. Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine.

19. De Vries, “Don’t Compromise your Desire for Development!,” 26, 30.

20. Ibid., 30.

21. Bellamy Foster et al., The Ecological Rift; Hartmann, “Population, Environment and Security”; Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population”; and Ross, The Malthus Factor.

22. Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population; and Thompson and Rayner, “Cultural Discourses.”

23. Sachs, The End of Poverty, 65.

24. Spencer, Principles of Biology, 444.

25. In Tobin, Politics and Population Control, 64.

26. Ibid., 67.

27. Caldwell and Caldwell, Limiting Population Growth; and Ross, The Malthus Factor.

28. Ross, The Malthus Factor.

29. In Escobar, Encountering Development, 355.

30. Duden, “Population,” 150, 151.

31. Ibid., 151.

32. Ibid., 154.

33. World Population Plan of Action, “Recommendations for Action.”

34. Duden, “Population,” 151.

35. Boland, “Environment, Population, and Women’s Human Rights.”

36. National Security Council, Executive Summary.

37. Ibid.

38. National Security Council, National Security Decision.

39. Ehrlich and Ehrlich, The Population Bomb.

40. Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons.”

41. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth.

42. Rockefeller Commission on Population Control, Population and the American Future.

43. Ehrlich and Ehrlich, The Population Explosion.

44. Adams, “Green Development Theory?”; and Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population.”

45. Harrison, The Third Revolution; and Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population.”

46. Black, Refugees, Environment and Development; Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population”; and Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence.

47. wced, Our Common Future.

48. Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population”.

49. For example, Homer-Dixon, “Environmental Scarcity and Violent Conflict”; and Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence.

50. See also, among others, Baechler, “Why Environmental Transformation Causes Violence”; Dinar, “Resource Scarcity and Environmental Degradation”; and Klare, Resource Wars.

51. Homer-Dixon, Environment, Scarcity, and Violence, 16.

52. Peluso and Watts, “Violent Environments: Responses,” 95.

53. Kaplan, ‘The Coming Anarchy.”

54. Ibid.

55. Peluso and Watts, Violent Environments; and Peluso and Watts, “Violent Environments: Responses.”

56. Hartmann, “Will the Circle be Unbroken?”

57. unep, geo 4, xvii.

58. unep, geo 5, xvi.

59. Wilson, “Challenging Neoliberal Population Control.”

60. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Family-Planning, accessed December 24, 2013.

61. Godwin, Of Population.

62. In Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology, 106.

63. Angus and Butler, Too Many People?

64. Commoner, The Closing Circle, 242.

65. Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth; and Simon, The Ultimate Resource.

66. Hartmann, “Population, Environment and Security.”

67. For example, Benjaminsen, “Does Supply-induced Scarcity Drive Violent Conflicts?”; Blaikie and Brookfield, Land Degradation and Society; Dalby, “Security and Environment Linkages Revisited”; Davis and Tilton, “The Resource Curse”; Fairhead “International Dimensions of Conflict”; Hartmann, “Population, Environment and Security”; Hartmann, “Will the Circle be Unbroken?”; Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population”; Le Billon, “The Political Ecology of War”; Peluso and Watts, Violent Environments; and Ross, The Malthus Factor.

68. Durham, “Political Ecology and Environmental Destruction,” 251.

69. Angus and Butler, Too Many People?; and Bellamy Foster et al., The Ecological Rift.

70. For example, Hartmann, “Population, Environment and Security”; Hartmann, “Will the Circle be Unbroken?”; and Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population.”

71. Hartmann, “Population, Environment and Security”; Hartmanmn, “Will the Circle be Unbroken?”; and Hartmann, “Rethinking the Role of Population.” See also Fairhead, “International Dimensions of Conflict; and Peluso and Watts, Violent Environments.

72. Hartmann, “Population Control.”

73. Foucault, The History of Sexuality; Foucault ‘Society Must Be Defended’; and Foucault, Security, Territory, Population.

74. Rose, Powers of Liberty.

75. Foucault, ‘Society Must Be Defended’, 241.

76. Ibid.

77. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 136.

78. Duden, “Population,” 148.

79. Federici, Caliban and the Witch, 16.

80. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 140–141.

81. Foucault, in The History of Sexuality, notes a similar focus on women’s reproduction vis-à-vis biopower in general.

82. See Graeber, Debt.

83. Tobin, Politics and Population Control, 67.

84. Althusser, “Lenin and Philosophy.”

85. Foucault, The History of Sexuality.

86. Ibid., 145, 147.

87. Ibid., 146.

88. Ibid., 148.

89. See also Foucault, ‘Society Must Be Defended’.

90. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 149.

91. Tobin, Politics and Population Control, 67, 61.

92. Kuumba, “Perpetuating Neo-colonialism,” 81.

93. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 148.

94. Ibid., 142.

95. Petty, Political Arithmetic.

96. Duden, “Population,” 147.

97. Ibid; and Escobar, Encountering Development.

98. Duden, “Population,” 146, 150, 151.

99. Ibid., 153.

100. Stavrakakis, “On Acts,” 3.

101. For example, Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political; and Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left.

102. Žižek, The Sublime Object; Stavrakakis, Lacan and the Political; and Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left.

103. Žižek, The Sublime Object, 142, 138.

104. Fink, The Lacanian Subject.

105. Žižek, The Sublime Object, 132, 138.

106. Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left, 241.

107. Žižek, The Sublime Object, 142.

108. Ibid., 143.

109. Ibid., 141.

110. Ibid., 140.

111. Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes, 389.

112. Žižek, “The Seven Veils of Fantasy,” 209.

113. Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left, 197–198.

114. See Bernard, Research Methods in Anthropology.

115. Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left, 163.

116. Lakoff, The Political Mind.

117. Wilson, “The Jouissance of Philanthrocapitalism,” 6.

118. Žižek, The Sublime Object, 140.

119. Ibid., 25.

120. Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left, 165, 180.

121. Žižek, The Sublime Object, 140 (emphasis in the original).

122. Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left.

123. Duden, “Population,” 146.

124. Ibid., 150.

125. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 154.

126. Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left, 202.

127. Elias, The Civilizing Process.

128. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents.

129. Duden, “Population,” 151.

130. Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development,” 277.

131. In Escobar, Encountering Development, 3 (emphasis added).

132. Collier, The Bottom Billion, xi.

133. Žižek, The Sublime Object, 142.

134. Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development,” 275.

135. So, Social Change and Development, 20.

136. Sato, “Subjectivity, Enjoyment, and Development,” 285.

137. Žižek, op cite, 142.

138. Ibid.

139. Ibid., 142.

140. Ibid., 143.

141. Fletcher, “Using the Master’s Tools?”

142. Stavrakakis, The Lacanian Left, 165.

143. Hartmann, “Population, Environment and Security,” 115.

144. Žižek, “Da Capo Senza Fino,” 223.

145. De Vries, “Don’t Compromise your Desire for Development!,” 30.