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population resource imbalancesRead, Dwight ANTHRO (Read@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU)Tue, 4 Oct 1994 17:25:00 PDT
" I wonder if data from Netsilik and !Kung San are the best models for understanding the relationships between people and resources? [....] we must conclude that some kind of population regulating mechanisms have been at work. They may be periodic famine and diseases as have been discussed on this list .... but again I am skeptical due to the sustained increase in population over the long run. The alternative is some sort of cultural control(s) ... either conscious (or unconscious) like infanticide, abortion, sexual taboos, dietary restrictions, etc." Loker seems to accept uncritically the syllogism: populations have not grown at their potential rate; there are cultural practises such as infanticide, abortion, sexual taboos, dietary restrictions, etc. These practises have the effect of reducing number of offspring conceive, or surviing. Therefore these are cultural controls of population size. Implicit is the assumption that "cultures" somehow take a pan-societal view and determine that unchecked population growth is harmful and then, in an unexplained manner, produce cultural practises to prevent that harm. (Or if put into a pseudo-Darwinian framework, those cultures with such cultural practieses are selected for and survive while cultures without those practises die out). At a MINIMUM, missing in this kind of argument is DEMONSTRATION of how the purported practise actually serves to regulate population size. As I commented in a previous post: female infanticide by Netsilik eskikmos was NOT a "population regulating mechanism"; the view expressed by !Kung women that they would like to have as many children as possible, so long as they have the resources to ensure that the well being of their family IS a population regualting mechanism. With the advent of cities, cities became (I argue) a population controlling mechanism by providing the conditions for epidemics and periodic devastation of populations (until the last hundred years or so when we have "interferred" with this feedback mechanism via control of disease, increased sanitation, etc.--but consider what is now happening in India with reoccurence of the plague). Human populations have increased in size over time, but at a rate FAR below their potential for growth. Consequently, all populations everywhere have ben involved (volitionally or otherwise) in conditions that limit population growth. That on a world wide basis and over time Homo sapiens has increased in size is likely due to nothing more than changes in resource procurement methods that have increased the resource base available for sustaining human populations. What is intriguing is not so much that for the most part populations have grown slowly or not at all, but why some populations have in fact instituted methods that increase the resource base and others have not. D. Read READ@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU This is pseudo science at its worstd via couching an argument in technical terms to give the illusion that something profound is being said. the failure to actually DEMONSTRATE (as opposed to suggest) that such cultural practises in fact serve to stabilize population size
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