The population problem; a study in human evolution

Carr-Saunders, A. M.

doi:10.5962/bhl.title.24881

Cited by 29 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…These conscious mechanisms were supplemented by the effects of such other traditional practices as interisland voyages and wars, by which many young males were lost (Firth 1957:163, 373-74). From an early survey of primitive cultures, Carr-Saunders (1922) concluded that all of them include customs whose primary function is to restrict the increase of population: abstention from marriage, delayed marriage, periodic abstention from intercourse, coitus interruptus, prolonged lactation, other types of contraception, abortion, and/or infanticide. Whatever fault one may find with this generalization, it is certainly far more valid than its contrary-that primitives ordinarily follow the Darwinian model.…”

Section: Fertilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Demographer's View of Prehistoric Demography [and Comments and Replies]

Petersen¹,

Braidwood²,

Dobyns³

et al. 1975

Current Anthropology

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INCREASINGLY DURING the past decade or two, archeologists, prehistorians, anthropologists, and practitioners of related disciplines have grappled with the problems involved in deducing population statistics from various types of merely indicative data. The results have seldom been satisfactory even to the authors themselves. The comment in a recent archeology text (Hole and Heizer 1969:306) seems to be typical of the current mood: Probably few kinds of archeological interpretation have more systematically built-in sources of potential error than have estimates of population, yet such figures are commonly given and used for making further inferences. It is safe to say that, because our concert:s in archeology turn more and more toward reconstructing social systems, we shall have to devise methods of obtaining better demographic data. The way to proceed, I suggest, may be to make fuller use of some of the techniques that demographers have devised to analyze populations in other contexts. 1 The content of this paper was first presented as several lectures in an experimental interdisciplinary course, cross-listed in anthropology and geology-mineralogy, organized by Ernest G. Ehlers at Ohio State University. Its purpose was to present techniques derived from several disciplines that are useful in classifying and interpreting archeological data. In preparing the article, I received welcome guidance from colleagues at Ohio State University: Emilio Casetti in the Geography Department and William M. Sumner,

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Section: Fertilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

A Demographer's View of Prehistoric Demography [and Comments and Replies]

Petersen¹,

Braidwood²,

Dobyns³

et al. 1975

Current Anthropology

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“…Eugenics in the early twentieth century had grown out of a concern with the quality of the population, and from arguments that a range of tendencies – from the lessening of selection pressures through charity and philanthropy to differential breeding of the better and worse segments of the population – was leading inexorably to degeneration (Rose, 1985: 73–5, and more generally Pick, 1989). Carr‐Saunders, however, attempted to reformulate the problem of population away from this model of degeneration (Carr‐Saunders, 1922). In the place of the central concern with a decline in quality of population, Carr‐Saunders substituted the notion of the quantitatively optimum level of population (Carr‐Saunders, 1922: 200–1).…”

Section: Against Degenerationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Populating Sociology: Carr-Saunders and the Problem of Population

Osborne¹,

Rose²

2008

The Sociological Review

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Research programmes in the social sciences and elsewhere can be seen as 'set-ups' which combine inscription devices and thought styles. The history of inscription devices without consideration of changing and often discontinuous thought styles effectively takes the historical dimension out of the history of thought. Perhaps thought styles are actually more important than the techniques of inscription that arise from them. The social sciences have relied upon multiple modes of inscription, often using, adapting or extending those invented for other purposes, such as the census. But the strategic prioritisation and deployment of specific inscriptions in analysis and argument has inescapably been dependent on particular thought styles; of which by far the most significant over the course of the first half of the twentieth century was eugenics with its specific problem of 'population'. This paper describes the way that Alexander Carr-Saunders took up the problem of population within early attempts to develop sociology. We ask whether Carr-Saunders can be considered a 'precursor' of a sociologist. The history of British sociology takes different shapes -as indeed does the very idea of a history of sociology -depending on how one answers this question.

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“…What is often represented by biologists (e.g., Carr-Saunders, 1922, Wynne-Edwards, 1962, Thorpe, 1976 as primarily a mechanism for li miting population might equally well be described as a mechanism for increasing, or better for adapting, numbers to a long-run equilibrium to the supporting power of the territory, taking as much advantage of new possibilities to maintain larger numbers as of any damage which a temporary excess might cause. Nature is as inventive in the one respect as in the other, and the human brain was probably the most successful structure enabling one species to outgrow all others in power and extent.…”

Section: Alienation Dropouts and The Claims Of Parasitesmentioning

confidence: 99%