A feminist exploration of ‘populationism’: engaging contemporary forms of population control

Abstract

Following the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 in Cairo, which prompted a discursive shift from population control to reproductive health and rights in international development, policy experts and scholars have relegated population control to the realm of history. This presents a unique challenge to feminist critics who seek to identify manifestations of population control in the present. In this article, we consider the potential of ‘populationism’ as terminology that may assist in clarifying varied new manifestations of population control. We explicate three interrelated populationist strategies that focus on optimizing numbers (demo), spaces (geo), and life itself (bio). Through our elaboration of these three populationisms and their interaction, we seek to inspire feminist, intersectional responses to the pernicious social, economic and environmental problems that technocratic populationist interventions obscure.

Keywords:

• biopopulationism
• demopopulationism
• geopopulationism
• population control
• populationism

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers as well as Wendy Harcourt, Susanne Schultz, Jill Williamson, Kalpana Wilson and Betsy Hartmann for reading and sharing their comments on early drafts of this article. We also acknowledge all the participants of Old Maps, New Terrain: Rethinking Population in an Era of Climate Change. The workshop, hosted by the Population and Development Program at Hampshire College in May 2016, provided the original stimulus for this article.

Notes on Contributors

Rajani Bhatia is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, SUNY at Albany and the author of Gender before Birth: Sex Selection in a Transnational Context.

Jade Sasser is an Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, University of California, Riverside and the author of a forthcoming book on population, climate change and development in an era of social justice.

Diana Ojeda is an Associate Professor of Instituto Pensar, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia.

Anne Hendrixson is the Director of the Population and Development Program and an Adjunct Faculty in the School of Critical Social Inquiry at Hampshire College.

Sarojini Nadimpally is the Executive Director of the New Delhi-based, non-profit organization, Sama: Resource Group on Women and Health.

Ellen E. Foley is an Associate Professor in International Development, Community, and Environment at Clark University and the author of Your Pocket is What Cures You: The Politics of Health in Senegal (Rutgers 2012).