DATE LECTURER3/7/2013 Aaron Pascal Mauck MA, PhD

Internationalism and Health

Lecture:

Biopower and Population Control

I. Biopower

II. The Transformation of Eugenics

III.Demographic Belligerence

IV. Family Planning

Biopower“An explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations”

-- History of Sexuality

“The set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy.”

-- “Security, Territory, Population

Biopower linked to the rise of modern states and the regulation of population forThe achievement of specific state ends. Exemplified by phenomena suchas disciplinary institutions like modern schools and prisons, statistical and demographic research, and human sciences like economics and sociology.

Represents a shift in the exercise of power away from dramatic displays ofAuthority exercised on individual bodies, towards the control of bodies en masse.

BiopowerEugenics and Birth Control begin as Social Movements rather thanState projects, but both attempted to Recruit states for the achievements Of their ends.

Collaboration with states became theNorm for both movements, accompaniedBy several policy proposals aimedAt population management

National Origins Act of 1924: Restricted limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the United States in 1890

Greatest impact of the Act felt on Southern and Eastern European populationswidely considered dysgenic in racially-inflected eugenics literature

Albert Johnson (Chair of the House Immigration Committee): Control of Immigration “more and more a biological problem.”

BiopowerAdvocates of negative eugenics promoted national & state policies of selective sterilization To control reproduction.

Buck v. Bell 1927: “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting fallopian tubes.”

O.W. Holmes

During the thirties, similar compulsory sterilization laws passed in Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Mexico, and of course, Germany.

The Transformation of EugenicsBy the thirties, Eugenicists generally recognize the limitations of a negative eugenics program based on sterilization alone

Edward East: “The Eugenicists have seldomGone farther than to suggest that the whole Current of society can be changed by interferingWith the two little rills which flow from either side[the most and least fit].” Research on recessiveGenes underscored the limits of sterilization asAn effective eugenic instrument.

Eugenic activities in Nazi Germany challenge the more radical strains ofNegative eugenics centered on race and disability, gradually replacingThe eugenic discourse centered on racial populations with one centeredOn other population divisions (resources, health), and the advocacyOf sterilization with advocacy of access to birth control.

By the thirties, a new movement of “reform eugenics” emerged, which still Held that certain socioeconomic or racial groups possessed desirable traits,But stressed the potential to nurture positive traits at all social levels.

Demographic BelligerenceIn the wake of the WWI, traditional ethnic and class divisions increasingly became reframed as biological divisions. Managing populations through positive measures (pronatalism) or negative measures (birth control) thus came to be seen as a means of resolvingsocial problems.

Hitler: conquest, depopulation, and resettlement of Eastern Europe constituted the “planned control of population movements” to restore the quality of the Aryan Race .

Germany implements pronatalist policies in occupied Scandinavian countries (immediate shutdown of birth Control clinics and arrest of their staff), and antinatalist Policies in occupied Slavic countries (restrictions onmarriage)

Demographic BelligerenceThe struggle to control the demographicFuture did not just take place between Belligerent nations but was also consideredIn global terms

Global expressions of demographicbelligerence had historically concerned relations between the white race and otherraces, often with the suggestion that whiteswere threatened with extinction Lothrop Stoddard

Lothrop Stoddard’s 1920 The Rising Tide of Color argued that colonial effortsto reduce famine and disease in nonwhite populations had resulted in “overcrowded colored homelands” out of which a “surplus of colored men”would spring. Stoddard thus argued for the isolation of other races like Bacterial invasions… limiting the area and amount of their food supply.”

Demographic Belligerence

By the thirties, global representations of demographic belligerence in terms of race begin to diminish, to be replaced by representations cutting across racial lines. Racial populations thus come to be seen in more complex terms.

Complex representations of racialized global populations emerged in response to embarrassment over Nazi race rhetoric, The embrace of population control efforts in nations like India and Japan, and the decline in popularity of traditional eugenic thinking about race.

Population control increasingly becomes reframed in terms of controlling thegrowth of specific populations within nations rather than the overall populationof particular nations. Efforts are often focused on populations with perceivedLimited resource and large family size.

As traditional eugenic justifications for population control begin to fall out of favor, these are replaced by justifications based on the detrimental health effects on children caused by poverty and inadequate nutrition

Demographic Belligerence

India represented a strong test forThe global population control Movement:

- Rapid population growth (death rate dropped 25% between 1920 &1920)

- International concern with the political status of Indian women

- Increasing investment in public health and nationalization of control over public health

- Lack of religious opposition to large-scale use of birth control

In India, Sanger aligned herself with local birth control advocates in favor of new Governmental measures, but these were Impeded by political and class tensions

Ultimately, Sanger’s attempts to createA network of birth control clinics failed due to the limits of technology/infrastructure,and local allies abandoned her cause

Family PlanningFamily Planning emerged at the intersection of the reform eugenics and birth control movements, but is framed less as a racial, geopolitical, or rights problem, than as a problemof social planning

The Swedish sociologists Gunnar & Alva Myrdal developed The most influential model, linking a comprehensive program Of birth control to ensure no unwanted births, with a Comprehensive system of pregnancy and early childhood Support to encourage pregnancy for those interested in Having children

This model reflected concerns about slowing population Growth in Sweden and opposition to immigration as an Acceptable solution to this problem

Family planning particularly effective because it combined An emphasis on individual preference with a system of socialEngineering designed to shape those preferences

Gunner & AlvaMyrdal

Family Planning

Increasing public health recognition of the adverse health effects of poverty in children spurred the Family planning movement and the entrenchmentOf social welfare as a basic state function in Nations like Britain and the US. Emphasis on accessTo birth control and Social Support for families garnersA widespread political coalition.

C.P. Blacker

Frederick Osborne

Unlike earlier birth control and eugenic efforts, familyplanning garners the tacit support of the Catholic Church, which is buoyed by the movement’s emphasis on freechoice, and comes to (grudgingly) accept the rhythm method as a viable birth control option, and is buoyed

Summary

The period between the First and Second World Wars witnessed the rise of A new movement of population management linked to perceived changes In life expectancy and increasing emphasis on pregnancy and childhoodas important life stages with long-term and cross-generational effects

Various strands related to the birth control and eugenics movements graduallyCohered into the movement for family planning, which linked free choice of

Pregnancy with large scale efforts of social engineering and support

Family planning linked the public health interest in childhood with recent effortsTo enlarge the welfare state. Both processes were rooted to some degree in

The socioeconomic conditions found in the Great Depression

Following World War II any explicit promotion of eugenics became politicallyUnacceptable, but the principles underlying family planning became increasingly

Popular, and gradually spread to the Global South