Challenging Hegemony, Competing for the Truth

Abstract

Chapter 6 focuses on the rebirth of the Malthusian concept of overpopulation and the translation of fears over hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction to the problem of population. Moreover, delving into how alternative theories arose to challenge the dominant modernization discourse championed by national security and development agencies of Western states, this chapter explores the subjugated discourses espoused by actors including the nascent environmental movement, the Soviet Union, the Vatican, and the Black Panthers. This chapter shows how it is the subjective threat perception, married to the dominant discursive frame the actor adopts, that results in the creation of natalist attitudes and policy. Significantly, the wishes of individuals themselves are systematically ignored when actors come to narrate the meaning of fertility for the collective, which due to the very conceptualization of the problem at hand most often results in the failure of policy to have the desired effects.