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Class Readings and Plans for Tuesday, October 27
Demography and Historical Ecology, Part II
Readings
Today we have three very conceptual articles.
- Boserup, Esther (1988) Environment, population, and technology in primitive societies, pp. 23-38. In The Ends of the Earth, ed. by D. Worster. Cambridge U. Press.
- Wood, James W. (1998) A theory of preindustrial population dynamics: demography, economy, and well-being in Malthusian systems. Current Anthropology 39(1):99-135.
- Chertow, Marian (2001)The IPAT Equation and its Variants, Journal of Industrial Ecology 4 (4): 13-29.
Class Plan
By 9:00 p.m. on Monday, October 26, please post a comment on whether you think technology can solve the problems of overuse of the earth's resources, in light of all the readings for the two demography sessions.
We will have two activities in class today:
- First, we will divide the class into four groups, to "workshop" the long and difficult article by Wood. Keep in mind that in order to get the full benefit out of Wood's article, you will need to know the arguments made by Malthus and Boserup. Each group will prepare answers to the following questions:
- Why are Malthus and Boserup usually thought to be opposed to each other?
- What is density dependent population growth?
- What determines whether a society is in a condition of plenty or misery?
- What is the Malthus and Boserup Ratchet?
Then we will chose one group to answer each of these questions and take questions from the rest of the class.
- After the break, we will have a general discussion of the following questions:
- Boserup's view is considerably more optimistic than Malthus's. Are they mutually exclusive views? How does Wood see the issues?
- Wood's model applies specifically to pre-industrial societies, while Chertow is writing about industrial ecology. Can the same analysis apply to both pre-industrial and industrial societies? Why or why not?
- Consider population growth, food limitations, and technology in the context of contemporary food security. Is population growth a problem? Why or why not?
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