Editor's Introduction: Is Overpopulation a Problem? Multiple Perspectives on this Perennial Question

• Date: 01 September 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12157
• Published date: 01 September 2016

The AMERICAN JOURNAL of

ECONOMICS and SOCIOLOGY

Published Q U A R T E R L Y in the interest of constructive

synthesis in the social sciences, under grants from the

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Volume 75 September 2016 Number 4

Editor’s Introduction:

Is Overpopulation a Problem? Multiple

Perspectives on this Perennial Question

Introduction

The idea of overpopulation is of relatively recent origin. The ques-

tion was not asked in a systematic way until Thomas Malthus in

1798 offered it as an explanation of poverty and a justification for

allowing the poor to starve. Until that time, the only serious atten-

tion anyone had given to the size of population of any jurisdiction

was to estimate how many soldiers could be dragooned into fighting

or to estimate the number of households capable of paying a tax.

From the perspective of monarchs and generals, a large population

was an asset, pure and simple. But the question of population size

emerged from the objective study of society for the first time in the

18

th

century. This made it possible to conceive of society as having

properties or qualities that could be understood numerically.

Prior to the 19

th

century, the domestic responsibility of the state

was generally limited to maintaining public order, settling legal

disputes, and financing infrastructure. The past two centuries, by

contrast, have been marked by what Michel Foucault (1998) referred

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 75, No. 4 (September, 2016).

DOI: 10.1111/ajes.12157

V

C2016 American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

to as “biopower”: the growing power of the state over bodies, their

health, and their longevity. This involves the collection and treat-

ment of sewage, the regulation of disease and sobriety, the preven-

tion of pollution, the collection of statistical data about populations,

the control of fertility and contraception, the management of birth

and death, and generally the medicalization of both physical and

mental health.

The state’s biopower (ability to manage life and death) did not

come into being out of nowhere. There have always been proce-

dures for managing biological functions of life, but they previously

operated at the level of the family or the village. The transfer of

these functions to the state is part of a larger process by which

urbanization and industrialization formalized older traditions and

transferred authority over them to a state bureaucracy. From agricul-

ture to religion to education, this process unfolded during the 19th

century. Biopower is merely one part of a larger shift to bureaucratic

management of many areas of life, some by state bureaucracies and

some by bureaucracies managed by private corporations. At every

step, there was resistance to state intrusion into the intimate aspects

of family and village life. This may be deemed biopolitics.

Perhaps what is most important about the era of biopower and

biopolitics is that national populations have come to be seen in

numerical terms, as abstractions from actual people. Until the 19

th

century, questions related to fertility were thought of in concrete

terms of labor supply (for in-kind services as a form of taxation),

inheritance, perpetuation of the family name, the necessity of emi-

gration, and many other personal factors. To conceive of birth and

death in terms of national or global aggregates was a novelty, which

eventually led to categories such as “carrying capacity” and

“ecological footprints.”

Is Population Growth a Problem?

Many people are convinced that the world is overpopulated (or

soon will be). Others might argue against that view, but both are

likely to accept the premise that the aggregate or social perspective

on population size is a relevant factor. The social perspective on

The American Journal of Economics and Sociology844