Carving up Population Science: Eugenics, Demography and the Controversy over the 'Biological Law' of Population Growth

Ramsden, Edmund

doi:10.1177/030631202128967433

Cited by 24 publications

(24 citation statements)

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“…One of the key shifts in this process related to the growing recognition, amongst demographers and policy makers in the 1970s, that historical gains in average life expectancy exceeded predictions and expectations built into social security and health care systems (Manton 1991). Until then most population management policies, including those of the WHO, drawing on models of demographic and epidemiological transition, emphasised the role of fertility and birth control (Ramsden 2002). From the late 1970s onwards, models and policies emphasised the increased burden of chronic illness in ageing populations and the importance of health maintenance programmes and strategies (Weisz & OlszynkoGryn 2010).…”

Section: Active Ageing In the Who: Constituting The Individual Life Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unmaking old age: Political and cognitive formats of active ageing

Lassen

Moreira

2014

Journal of Aging Studies

120

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Publisher's copyright statement: NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Aging Studies. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be re ected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A de nitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Aging Studies, 30, August 2014, 10.1016/j.jaging.2014.03.004. Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

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Section: Active Ageing In the Who: Constituting The Individual Life Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unmaking old age: Political and cognitive formats of active ageing

Lassen

Moreira

2014

Journal of Aging Studies

120

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“…Because "population" is such a fundamental term for so many sciences that analyze population data-for example, epidemiology, demography, sociology, ecology, and population biology and population genetics, not to mention statistics and biostatistics (see, e.g., Desrosières 1998;Gaziano 2010;Greenhalgh 1996;Hey 2011;Kunitz 2007;Mayr 1988;Pearce 1999;Porter 1986;Ramsden 2002;Stigler 1986;Weiss and Long 2009)-presumably it would be reasonable to posit that the meaning of "population" is clear-cut and needs no further discussion.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Who and What Is a “Population”? Historical Debates, Current Controversies, and Implications for Understanding “Population Health” and Rectifying Health Inequities

Krieger

2012

Milbank Quarterly

105

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Context:The idea of "population" is core to the population sciences but is rarely defined except in statistical terms. Yet who and what defines and makes a population has everything to do with whether population means are meaningful or meaningless, with profound implications for work on population health and health inequities. Methods:In this article, I review the current conventional definitions of, and historical debates over, the meaning(s) of "population," trace back the contemporary emphasis on populations as statistical rather than substantive entities to Adolphe Quetelet's powerful astronomical metaphor, conceived in the 1830s, of l'homme moyen (the average man), and argue for an alternative definition of populations as relational beings. As informed by the ecosocial theory of disease distribution, I then analyze several case examples to explore the utility of critical population-informed thinking for research, knowledge, and policy involving population health and health inequities.Findings: Four propositions emerge: (1) the meaningfulness of means depends on how meaningfully the populations are defined in relation to the inherent intrinsic and extrinsic dynamic generative relationships by which they are constituted; (2) structured chance drives population distributions of health and entails conceptualizing health and disease, including biomarkers, as embodied phenotype and health inequities as historically contingent; (3) persons included in population health research are study participants, and the casual equation of this term with "study population" should be avoided; and (4) the conventional cleavage of "internal validity" and "generalizability" is misleading, since a meaningful choice of study participants must be in relation to the range of

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“…Defining normal genetic variation achieved new valence in the Cold War period; specifically, the characterisation of elevated mutation rates from atomic exposure demanded a sense of the range of variation in unexposed or 'control' populations, against 2 There was general agreement within the League of Nations that 'population densities and war were directly linked' (Bashford, 2008). For a discussion of how 'population' was made into a boundary object between sociology, biology, anthropology, economics and psychology, see Ramsden (2002).…”

Section: Unique and Normal Pure And Mixed Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%