Carving up Population Science

Ramsden, Edmund

doi:10.1177/030631270203200509

Cited by 16 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 42 publications

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“…This view was exemplified by American biologist Raymond Pearl (1912: 48) who stated at the First International Congress of Eugenics in 1912: fact that this decline is differential… generally it is true that those racial stocks which by common agreement are of high, if not the highest, value, to the state or nation, are precisely the ones where the decline in reproduction rate has been most marked. ' Pearl devised his own theory of population -the logistic S curve (Ramsden 2002)providing a law of diminishing fertility. Drawing from his experiments with fruit flies (drosophila) in petri dishes, Pearl (1939) argued that A Natural History of Population could be written based on a law of density and growth applying to all living organisms.…”

Section: Population Theory the 'Struggle For Population' And 'Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demographic Knowledge, ‘Race Suicide’ and the Making of Racial Jews in Interwar Europe

Bertaux¹

2013

ejts

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In their review of the endorsement of the term 'demographic engineering' in Ottoman and Turkish studies, Nikos Sigalas and Alexandre Toumarkine (2008: §12) underscored three reasons why the term particularly gained the favor of some scholars: it supports the idea of continuity between the late Ottoman empire and the Turkish nation-state, it meets with a liberal critique of state planning understood as paving the way for violence against minorities, and it helps in circumventing the taboo imposed by state ideology and apparatus over its own repressive history towards minorities. It is this latter aspect Erik-Jan Zürcher (2008: 1) invokes to explain why he first used the term back in 2005. Fearing to be exposed to state reprisals, Turkish academics invited Zürcher to introduce a collective volume published in Turkish in Turkey in which he used the term demographic engineering (Zürcher 2005). Yet, as Sigalas and Toumarkine remark, state repression alone does not explain why the term took root. Indeed, Zürcher (2008: 1) concedes that it proved to be more than a tactical move, as 'demographic engineering' became a positive source of inspiration he found in a work by two demographers, the late Myron Weiner and Michael Teitelbaum (2001), in their co-authored book titled Political Demography, Demographic Engineering. 2 My contribution to this third issue is on rather than in demographic engineering. I take issue with a narration of the history of humanity as a 'struggle for demographic power' (Bookman 1997) underpinning the category of demographic engineering. I regard demographic engineering as naturalizing the connection between population, territory and security eschewing both the modern codification of the concept of population and its power effect. My argument is that the connection between security and population Demographic Knowledge, 'Race Suicide' and the Making of Racial Jews in Interw...

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Section: Population Theory the 'Struggle For Population' And 'Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demographic Knowledge, ‘Race Suicide’ and the Making of Racial Jews in Interwar Europe

Bertaux¹

2013

ejts

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Boundary‐work in science education: a case study of GM food

Lin

2015

British Educational Res J

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The term ‘boundary‐work’ is used to refer to the constant effort to draw and re‐draw the boundary of science; it has long been portrayed as constructed by the stakeholders of science to demarcate science from non‐science to establish the authority of science. Twenty‐nine semi‐structured interviews were carried out with students from one university in England, originally to explore their views about genetically modified (GM) food. However, the distinctive repertoires adopted by students of natural science as opposed to humanities and social sciences were striking. As a result, the focus of this study shifted to examine the discourse students adopted to talk about a controversial scientific topic, using GM food as a case study. This paper shows that the boundary between scientific and non‐scientific academic disciplines is heavily ingrained in university students' discourse and it is collectively constructed by both actors that are included in, and excluded from, the institution of science. The innate authority assigned to the institution of science is found to have deepened the gap between scientific and non‐scientific disciplines. In this study, science disciplines were portrayed as coherent and consistent, following similar scientific methods and philosophy whereas humanities and social sciences disciplines were merely considered as ‘non‐science’ disciplines. Hence, this paper suggests the wide scope of science should be better recognised and acknowledged in the education system. Finally, this paper demonstrates that people's role in relation to the institution of science has an impact on their discourse about and, perhaps subsequently, their views towards, science and technology.

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Publish and Perish

Tanner

2013

N.T.M.

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In spite of having published more than hundred articles and three monographs, the chemist and statistician Alfred James Lotka (1880Lotka ( -1949 is not very well known. Because he had not experienced a conventional academic curriculum, he remained ,at the margins' of the scientific community. In 1925 he aimed for a breakthrough with his first monograph Elements of Physical Biology. The basic idea of this study was to understand nature in terms of energy.Lotka's mathematical approach was highly innovative, although he had borrowed certain notions from his former teacher, the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald. This article focuses on the very process of how a new idea developed and spread through the scientific community, and tries to determine to what extent the author-with his personality, his intentions and feelings-was part of this process. This includes looking at the emotional strain that followed the publication of Lotka's masterpiece. Considering his anxieties, worries and distress during the period of reception, and his efforts to make sure his book was acknowledged by its audience, the article sheds light on often neglected aspects of scientific work such as identification, intention, mimicry, originality, and rivalry. The case study deals with a systematic blindness in the history of science: it takes into account the actors of science, their personality and their strategic moves, in order to come to a better understanding of the close connection between their work and their actions. In addition, the history of Lotka's worries about the reception of his book might help us challenge the postulate of ,,publish or perish'' in today's science.

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Carving up Population Science

Cited by 16 publications

References 42 publications

Demographic Knowledge, ‘Race Suicide’ and the Making of Racial Jews in Interwar Europe

Demographic Knowledge, ‘Race Suicide’ and the Making of Racial Jews in Interwar Europe

Boundary‐work in science education: a case study of GM food

Publish and Perish

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