From: gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Population growth and cultural destruction (Re: Nasty
Distribution: world
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 92 09:43:39 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <STEINLY.92Dec20202941@topaz.ucsc.edu> steinly@topaz.ucsc.edu writes:

 >    Well, I have to agree with Dean on the basis of Steinn's rigidly one-
 >    dimensional theory that it is improved health care which has led to
 >    population growth, which is so obtuse as to be meaningless.
 >  
 > Hey, chill Gil, I gave an _example_ of short term population growth
 > resulting from improved health care extending life expectancy,
 > the point being that cultural responses adjusting ferility and
 > strategies for family size work on longer time scales. It is _a_
 > mechanism for population growth that tends to work to produce a very
 > sudden burst of population. Long term growth is a different issue.

Look, I'm sorry but your theory is just fundamentally misleading. We
already had a discussion in another thread on the breeding cycles of
kangaroos, and I might as well add here most trees and woody plants
here in Australia which will not even open their seed pods until after
a bushfire has burnt through. Sudden bursts of population for just
about all species always follows trauma, and for the case of humans in
Western society I would point the baby boom following WW2 as a classic
recent case we will still be living with for the next 30-40 years as
we all begin to drop off the perch in our turn.

 >   The facts
 >    are that women everywhere had access to sophisticated cultural norms,
 >    social organisation, sexual mores and knowledge of herbs and medicines
 >    that they did not bother having so many children to start with.
 >  
 > Everywhere? At all times? Are you serious???

Again, if you have a look through as many cases as you possibly can
you will find that variations on the population control mechanisms I
refer to are the norm, rather than the exception, and one must draw
the conclusion that humans are very intelligent creatures indeed.

It follows then that a far more fruitful research path would then seek
to draw out the exceptions and their correlative circumstances.

 > Hmm, US mean is something like 2.1 - 2.3 children per woman, hunter
 >  - gatherer cultures and pasturalists are quoted as having 4.3 - 7.3
 > children per woman. Somewhere along the way women seem to have decided
 > to have fewer children. I claim that there is a long term correlation
 > with the fact that US infant mortality is 1.3% (and considered high at that).

I am not certain what study you are quoting, but I would certainly want
to know more about what h-g or pastoralist societies are being cited,
when, where, and in what circumstances.

 > Well, somebody evidently did extrapolate mortalities of prehistoric
 > societies and compared them with other primates. People can make their
 > own judgements as to how valid the comparison is.

Sure they can. The problems arise when such judgements are brought
forward in support of current programs which themselves have not been
validated against current studies of real people living today, most
especially when those same people are not consulted before programs
are put in place. If there are to be effective controls, believe me,
you had better ask the women concerned about if *first*.

 > The theory of imperialist domination governing family size is
 > interesting, I'd even concede that it is a contributing factor
 > but to suggest it is the dominant effect seems to me to be ludicrous,
 > too many known counter-examples. For example, I  think
 > demographics of various native American groups contradict it?

The dominant factor, again, is trauma visited upon the population and
I cited several examples where that trauma was explicitly inflicted by
dominating societies. I also cited here above self-inflicted trauma by
a nation going to war, and its aftermath. There are plenty of studies
around to support now such well-accepted understanding of the process
of population dynamics among humans, none of which indicate medical
intervention as causing population growth in either short bursts or in
the long term.

If you want to look at your various American groups, you might just
take the lid off the pressure cooker you have them in, and see what
happens then. Like the Irish when the potato arrived . . .

Anyway, Stein, here it is Christmas Eve already. Best wishes of the
season to you, and look forward to more after the break.

--
Gil Hardwick                          Internet:  gil@tillage.DIALix.oz.au
Consulting Ethnologist                              Fidonet:  3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                         Voice:  (+61 9) 399 2401
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