Demographic study and the idea of a population was developed and modified over the course of the twentieth century, mirroring the political, social, and cultural situations and aspirations of different societies. This growing field adapted itself to specific policy concerns and was therefore never apolitical, despite the protestations of practitioners that demography was natural. Demographics were transformed into public policies that shaped family planning, population growth, medical practice, and environmental conservation. While covering a variety of regions and time periods, the essays in this book share an interest in the transnational dynamics of emerging demographic discourses and practices. Together, they present a global picture of the history of demographic knowledge.

Heinrich Hartmannis Assistant Professor of History at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His book,Der Volkskörper bei der Musterung. Militärstatistik und Demographie in Europa vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg(Wallstein 2011) received the Henry E. Sigerist Award in 2012. His research focuses on the history of nineteenth and twentieth century demography in Europe and on the history of Turkish modernization in a transnational perspective.

List of Figures Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Counting, Constructing, and Controlling Populations: The History of Demography, Population Studies, and Family Planning in the Twentieth CenturyCorinna R. Unger and Heinrich Hartmann

Part I: Producing Demographic Subjects: Transnational Discourses

Chapter 1.The View From Below and the View From Above: What U.S. Census-taking Reveals about Social Representations in the Era of Jim Crow and Immigration RestrictionPaul Schor

Chapter 2.Reproduction as a New Demographic Issue in Interwar PolandMorgane Labbé

Chapter 3.Family Planning: A Rational Choice? The Influence of Systems Approaches, Behavioralism, and Rational Choice Thinking on Mid-Twentieth Century Family Planning ProgramsCorinna R. Unger

Chapter 4.Overpopulation and the Politics of Family Planning in Chile and Peru: Negotiating National Interests and Global Paradigms in a Cold War WorldJadwiga E. Pieper Mooney

Chapter 5.Revisiting the Early 1970s Commoner-Ehrlich Debate about Population and Environment: Dueling Critiques of Production and Consumption in a Global AgeThomas Robertson

Part II: Demographic Knowledge in Practice: Transfers and Transformations

Chapter 6.Counting People: The Emerging Field of Demography and the Mobilization of the Social Sciences in the Formation of Policy, South Korea since 1948John Paul DiMoia

Chapter 7.Laparoscopy as a Technology of Population Control: A Use-Centered History of Surgical SterilizationJesse Olszynko-Gryn

Chapter 8.A Twofold Discovery of Population: Assessing the Turkish Population by its Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices, 1962-1980Heinrich Hartmann

Chapter 9.Seeing Population as a Problem: Influences of the Construction of Population Knowledge on Kenyan Politics (1940s to 1980s)Maria Dörnemann

Chapter 10.Filtering Demography and Biomedical Technologies: Melanesian Nurses and Global Population ConcernsAlexandra Widmer

Index