Hygiene, Population Sciences and Population Policy: a Totalitarian Menace?

Abstract

Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860–1945. Nature as Model and Nature as Threat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 348 pp., £19.95, ISBN 0–521–57434 X.Carl Ipsen, Dictating Demography. The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 281 pp., £35, ISBN 0–521–15545–7.Simon Szreter, Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain 1860–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, 704 pp., £50, ISBN 0–521–34343–7.Alain Desrosières, La politique des grands nombres, histoire de la raison statistique (Paris: La Découverte, 1993), 437 pp., FF 220; ISBN 2–707–12253–X; English translation by Camille Naish, The Politics of Large Numbers. A History of Statistical Reasoning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 416 pp., $45, ISBN 0–674–68932–1.Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism 1870–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 641 pp., £22.95, ISBN 0–521–42397–X; French translation by B. Frumer, L'Hygiène de la race (Paris: La Découverte, 1998), 301 pp., FF 160, ISBN 2–707–12706–X.Over the last ten years a series of social historians have published studies of the link between the definition of scientific categories and the implementation of demographic policies in Europe. This discussion of the classification of populations in terms of social class, race or location (rural, urban, underprivileged areas) has complicated the traditional theories of the scientist and politician, Max Weber, and the student of ‘bio-power’, Michel Foucault. Now, historians of political ideas are finding living examples to illustrate recent advances in the sociology of science, establishing themselves at the interface between the history of human health and that of population policies. The aim is to throw light on the exchange between scientists and population management: among the themes to be treated are natalism, populationism, hygienism and eugenics.

To inherit the Earth. Imagining world population, from the yellow peril to the population bomb

“…56 Under Notestein's leadership the UN's population division successfully promoted national censuses with standardized procedures in almost all the newly independent states. 60 The very categories imply collective interests, as shown by the difficulties ethnically-divided states have in conducting censuses. 57 Notestein later explained that gathering data was politically safer than promoting birth control -a 1952 World Health Organization proposal nearly provoked several Catholic member states to withdraw.…”

“…59 As recent histories of how states use demographic statistics have shown, they are never value neutral. 60 The very categories imply collective interests, as shown by the difficulties ethnically-divided states have in conducting censuses. 61 Alternatively, a successful census constitutes a nationalist ritual, culminating in a 'group snapshot' on the ceremony date.…”