Figuring the Population Bomb traces the genealogy of twentieth-century demographic "facts" that created a mathematical panic about a looming population explosion. This narrative was popularized in ...the 1970s in Paul Ehrlich's best-selling book The Population Bomb, which pathologized population growth in the Global South by presenting a doomsday scenario of widespread starvation resulting from that growth. Carole McCann uses an archive of foundational texts, disciplinary histories, participant reminiscences, and organizational records to reveal the gendered geopolitical grounds of the specialized mathematical culture, bureaucratic organization, and intertextual hierarchy that gave authority to the concept of population explosion. These demographic theories and measurement practices ignited the population "crisis" and moved nations to interfere in women's reproductive lives. Figuring the Population Bomb concludes that mid-twentieth-century demographic figures remain authoritative to this day in framing the context of transnational feminist activism for reproductive justice.
How has the Islamic view of marriage, family formation and child rearing developed and adapted over the centuries? Is contraception just permitted or actively encouraged? The family is the basic ...social unit of Islamic society. Even without compelling population pressures, there has been concern with spacing and family planning. This book is the result of a massive research project, gathering fourteen centuries (the seventh to the twentieth) of views on family formation and planning, as expressed by leading Islamic theologians and jurists. The work has been discussed and shaped at each stage by a committee of Islamic experts representing the majority of the Muslim countries.The book provides a much needed source of reference and will be of equal value and interest to professionals in health care and development work and to those working in the academic disciplines of Middle East studies, religion and population studies.
PDF
