Populating the 1980s: A Decade Revisited
Online Seminar Series, Starts 29 March 2023
Historiography on population management in the 1930s-70s has been diverse and multifocal. Stemming from a discursive critique of Malthusianism in its various forms, this literature links coercion and calculated consent from South Asia to the Americas. The 1980s present a new query.
The task ahead is to think about the afterlife of demographic transition in different political geographies. This period has been relatively understudied in some contexts (like South Asia) and over studied in others (China). The period has also seen a major political event overshadow our frameworks: the split of the USSR and the impending ‘end of history’.
How do we walk past these reductive narratives and produce newer insights? How do we read population in the 1980s – as an artefact from the preceding decades or something not quite so obsolete?
Speakers
29 March 2023, Mytheli Sreenivas (Ohio State)
“South Asia, Population Planning and National Imaginations: A Discussion on Method and Periodization”
26 April 2023, Sanjam Ahluwalia (Northern Arizona University)
“Entertainment Interruptus: Films Division of India’s Messaging on Population Control, Family Planning, and Happiness, in the 1980s”
24 May 2023, Aya Homei (Manchester University)
“Under the Name of Friendship: Population Politics & Sino-Japanese Cooperation in Family Planning in the 1980s”
27 September 2023, Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (Strathclyde)
“Making Abortion Biomedical: RU-486 Between France, China and the World Health Organisation”
11 October 2023, Raúl Antonio Necochea (University of North California)
”From Demographic to Discursive Explosion: New Players & Priorities in 1980s Peru”
27 March 2024, Alison Bashford (UNSW)
“Demographic Transition as an Artefact: Ten Years of Global Population – History, Geopolitics & Life on Earth & Everything in Between”
This series is convened by Dr Aprajita Sarcar. Contact a.sarcar@unsw.edu.au for more information.
