Population History and Population Policies from an Anthropological Perspective
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2188591 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Steven Polgar (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1972 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 203-211 |
| Publication date | 1972-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Current Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/201269 |
| OpenAlex | W2002997421 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 69 |
This paper takes an anthropological approach in examining what I discern to be the theoretical bases of neo-Malthusian population policies. Many demographers hold that in order to come to terms with the population problem, one should counteract an ingrained desire of families to have a large number of children. This policy conclusion depends to a significant degree on four demographic tenets of questionable standing: (a) a homeo-static, single-transition model of human population history; (b) the assumption that natality and mortality have uniformly been "very high" until the advent of industrialization; (c) an explanation of family-size desires by reference primarily to fixed norms held on the familial level; and (d) a simple motivationist view of factors influencing family planning practices, including a disregard of the differential costs and benefits involved in using alternative methods and services for birth control. After discussing population history in the framework of a critique of these four tenets, I offer a different set of policy recommendations for the urgent task of population planning
Birth control · Birth rate · Control (management · Demographic transition · Economics · Family planning · Fertility · Genealogy · Industrialisation · Order (exchange · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Population · Population control · Population growth · Research methodology · Set (abstract data type · Sociology · Computer Science · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Demography · History · Law
Social influences on fertility at later ages of reproduction
Birth and Death
Explanatory/Predictive Models of Hunter–Gatherer Adaptation
Demographic Archaeology
Intensification and Australian Prehistory
Demographic Archaeology
The Theory of Epidemiologic Transition
Shipibo polygyny and patrilocality
Making Peasants Protestant and Other Projects
Anthropology and the Study of Disability Worlds
Illness Representations in Medical Anthropology
A Comparison of the Spatial Distribution of Agriculture and Craft Specialization in Five State-Level Societies
From Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture
Underdevelopment, demographic change, and health care on the Navajo Indian reservation
Population Pressure as a Non-Explanation
Toward an Assessment of the Social Role of Rural Midwives and Its Implication for the Family Planning Program
Varieties of materialism
Late pleistocene population dynamics
Factors Maintaining Low Population Density among the Prehistoric New York Iroquois
Status and Roles of Women as Factors in Fertility Behavior
Early Hydraulic Civilization in Egypt
High-Altitude Tibetan Populations in the Remote Himalaya
Population Dynamics in the Capitalist World-Economy
Population Pressure Theory, Elite Exploitation, and Reproductive Success
Dynamics of populations, movements and responses to climatic changes in North Africa and the Nile Valley
A suggested framework for analysis of urban-rural fertility differentials with an illustration of the Tanzanian case
The management of early pregnancy
The Sexual Division of Labor and the Value of Children
The Theoretical Possibility of Extensive Infanticide in the Graeco-Roman World
On One Geography and a Third World
Psychologists and population research
The biology of the colonizing ape
Modeling neolithic dispersal in Central Europe
Natality and Family Planning in Three Bombay Communities
Variation and change in fertility in West Central Nepal
Demographic model of the Neolithic transition in Central Europe
Women's Power, Children's Labor
Notes on the reproduction possibilities of human prehistorical populations
Female infanticide, European diseases, and population levels among the Mackenzie Dene
Demographic Estimates in Archaeology
An Anthropological Approach to the Study of the Economic Value of Children in Java and Nepal [and Comments and Reply]
Natural Fertility, Birth Spacing, and the “First Demographic Transition
A longitudinal and cross‐cultural analysis of fertility decline
A test of the child replacement hypothesis
Reproductive possibilities and estimations of the biological dynamics of earlier human populations
Obituary
The Impact of Cultural Change and Population Growth On The Shipibo of the Peruvian Amazon
Anthropology and population
From population control to reproductive health
The Preceramic Period Site of Paloma, Peru
Child Labour and Population Growth in Rural Asia
Social organization, incest, and fertility in a Kosraen village
History of Human Life Span and Mortality
Stable Populations and Skeletal Age
Carrying Capacity and the Politics of Overpopulation
Population regulation, ecology, and political economy in preindustrial Iceland
New perspectives on Tibetan fertility and population decline
The Modern Demographic Transition
Scope of Perspective in Fertility Models
The First Demographic Transition
Modes of Explanation in Anthropological Population Theory
Steven Polgar 1931-1978
On Causes and Consequences of Ancient and Modern Population Changes1
Estimating Past Population Trends
The Sociology of Feeling and Emotion
Population Growth, Carrying Capacity, and Conflict
On Mundkur on Diffusion
On the Sexual Division of Labour, Population, and the Origins of Agriculture
Culture and Natality
| Unique citing works | 69 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,25 |
| Citation span | 1971 - 2014 (44) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 68 |