From: dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.greens
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Date: 7 Jan 93 20:58:55 GMT
Organization: VEXCEL Corporation, Boulder CO

In article <1993Jan7.093407.28793@netcom.com> 74170.3696@compuserve.com writes:
>[Posted for Karen]
>
>In message <181647.8848@vexcel.com> dean@vexcel.com (Dean Alaska) writes:
>
>> Remember that non-industrialized societies had stable populations
>> until their culture was pushed out of the way by western society. 
>> Many people claim that the resulting population jump was due to
>> medical advances but there is no proof of this.  It may just be
>> a coincidence.  There is some proof that populations are stable
>> when people are secure in their society, and that populations
>> explode when that security is removed.
>
>Excuse me, Dean, but some correction is required.  Pre-industrial
>societies did not necessarily have stable populations -- I've read
>that China went through a number of population surges and crashes -
>- nor were their populations limited by cultural security, whatever
>that is.  In many cases, their populations were limited by war,
>famine, and disease.  In some cases, populations were limited by
>celibacy, late marriage, polyandry, birth control, and infanticide.
>(Various means, various places.)  

I do plead guilty to overgeneralization.  There are a variety of
experiences by various indigenous cultures.  My point is that the
type of population problems seen todays is not simply a result
of better medical care.  Such care is still farily poor is many
of these countries.  Such features as celibacy, late marriage,
polyandry and birth control are aspects of many local cultures
that may be changed when westerners arrive and forcibly replace
the local traditions.  If polyandry has been a succesful part of
local population control, then is it appropriate for arriving
Christian missionaries to stop such practices?  This is the
idea I am suggesting.  You dismiss the idea of "cultural
security" but there are researchers in the field who would
disagree.  Security (or lack of it) is a part of why many
people have more children.  The destruction of these support
mechanisms leaves people isolated and in unfamiliar circumstances.
>
>In Polynesia, populations generally crashed after first contact. 
>Microbes.  Populations began to grow again some hundred years ago. 
>In Tonga, the Polynesian kingdom where I did my anthropological
>fieldwork, population was growing at some 3% per year (figure from
>memory; perhaps not completely accurate), a very high rate of
>population growth.  The Tongans were overcropping their land,
>overfishing their coastal waters, and immigrating at great rates. 
>IMO, growth was fueled by cultural beliefs about the value of
>children that survived from pre-Christian days.  
>
>Population had grown much more slowly in pre-contact times, when it
>had been limited by endemic warfare, disease and periodic famines. 
>I lived through a hurricane, famine, and drought in one remote
>village.  We survived on Red Cross relief rice, which is certainly
>a modern innovation.  In the old days, some of us would have
>starved.  My genealogical studies in the village also indicated a
>much higher rate of infant and child mortality in previous
>generations; modern medicine and sanitation had guaranteed that
>many more children would survive.  

Is it possible that some of the limitation in pre-contact times
were from the various traditions that you described earlier rather
than just war, disease and famine?  Did
they overfish and overcrop then?  Was there a foreign-currency/trade
motivation for this overuse that did not exist previously?  While
I know nothing of these polynesian cultures, I have seen a lot of
proof for other contributing factors in other cultures when
industrialized society arrived.  

In Ladakh, the arrival of food "aid" destroyed the local food
production economy and made all of the residents dependent on
a central government.  People living in dispersed villages then
had to move to urban centers.  Those who had previously been the
wise and respected elders were now denigrated as old fashioned.
A society that had had a stable population now has a high growth
rate.  And importantly, even those who did not wish to participate
in the new economy had no choice.  Scarce water supplies previously
used for irrigation were now used for local industry so that these
people could get a wage job.  This use of the water ended local
food production.  You either joined the cash economy, which required
getting a job, or just go on aid welfare.
>
>Karen Lofstrom
>
>--
>cliftonr@netcom.com     Home: +1 808 521 9073  Work: +1 808 625 3234
>Clifton Royston, Pope of the Church of the Subgenius in Paradise
>"Some lives are like that." - attributed to Mark. Gooley


-- 
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	Dean Myerson     (aka dingo in boulder)     dean@vexcel.com
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