Alice Reid asked me to contribute to the September 2nd-4th 1998 meeting of the British Society for Population Studies, which is to mark the 200th anniversary of Malthus' 'First Essay'. The Hardinian taboo, which is what humanity uses to repress its population problems, was then reapplied - "...we do like our papers to be original and recent..." she said!
Malthus writhes in his leaden coffin as this Society firmly maintains the Hardinian taboo on demographic entrapment, and, to its eternal disgrace, allows a continent and more to proceed to Malthusian slaughter and starvation with its dilemmas undiscussed.
In October 1994 1 asked Jack Caldwell, Africa's most eminent demographer: "How much of Africa do you think is demographically trapped?" "Most of it, " he replied, "except perhaps Ghana." I repeated this to Ofosu Amah, Professor of Public Health in Accra. "Why don't you think we are?" he asked. Perhaps they are both wrong (most unlikely), but let's at least debate it. After all Africa's population is set to quadruple, and nutritional levels there are worse now than they were in 1960. At approaching a billion now, there could be the best part of three billion with no means of support and therefore potentially expected to starve or to slaughter one another. Not to speak of South Asia where the population of India is expected to double, and which can barely feed itself now. Added to which global per capita grain has been falling since the mid 1980s. Since 1990 the percentage increase in global grain yield has been below what all expert projections consider necessary. Could it be that the world as a whole is demographically trapped?
Why then has this Society never debated entrapment, or anyone apart Charles Elliott and myself ever written about disentrapment? Why is nobody discussing it today? I asked one professor why his centre for population studies does not research it? "We only have demographers," he replied. I asked another professor why his institute for development studies does not research it? "We have no demographers...", he answered.
From which one has to conclude that both demography and development economics have reached the point of farce - and tragedy. Farce is merely risible. With Rwanda as only a foretaste, Malthusian tragedy on the scale of a continent and more, is going to go down in history as the greatest disaster of all time, far surpassing in deaths even two world wars. In matters demographic you demographers are the guardians of the public mind. If you dare not debate entrapment, you can hardly expect the public to, nor can you expect the UN agencies to frame remotely realistic global population policies.
A primarily agricultural community is demographically trapped if it has exceeded, or is projected to exceed these three variables:
1 The carrying capacity of its local ecosystem.
2 Its ability to migrate.
3 The ability of its economy to generate sufficient exports, and therefore adequate imports, especially food, to prevent it from proceeding to starvation and slaughter.
The common way to avoid confronting entrapment (and therefore to continue to stare into ones navel) is to avoid considering the variables of this deadly triad together, before starvation and slaughter supervene, and to assume that whatever is not included, usually economic development, will solve the problem in time, which is exactly what demography (and development economics) currently does - and what is being done at this meeting. When I first explored entrapment I was warned what a wretchedly narrow subject demography presently is - obsessed with the technical manipulation of defective data. And so I have found it to be. If a discipline deliberately fails to address a highly significant conjunction of variables in the real world, not because it is technically difficult, but because it is 'politically inconvenient' to do so, it, but - NOT the colleagues!! - has to be considered corrupt. (Charles Elliott out of deference to the colleagues distances himself from this allegation)
Above all the problem is vast - there is barely an aspect of the human condition it does not touch. Far from being a disaster, the recognition of entrapment should be seen as a Heaven-sent opportunity for effective action. If one does consider the three variables together, one discovers a veritable treasure trove of necessary and immensely hopeful measures - especially when the alternatives are starvation and slaughter.
These opportunities include:
- A '1-child world' - as a 'political direction', not as a tight 'directive' and the key public programme of the next millennium.
- Sustainable lifestyles and limitations in Northern resource consumption.
- The restructuring of the present tottering* human rights edifice which currently takes no account of the ecological constraints on these rights, or of the need to match individual human rights with communal obligations.
- Let us fondly hope, some greater measure of global equity, now getting steadily worse.
Most importantly, in the lifting of the Hardinian taboo on entrapment lies the 'engine' of all these changes - in entrapment jargon 'benign uproar' in the manner of this meeting, benign uproar being any confrontation that falls short of actually letting blood. The taboo needs to lift, the paradigm needs to shift. Garrett Hardin thinks his taboo might lift quite quickly. Thanks to the web he might be right. Because entrapment is taboo to your journals, and now also to The Lancet, we have had to open the website http://www.leeds.ac.uk/demographic_entrapment - the critical demographic website run by two non demographers! 2
Worse, for the reputation of demography, it looks as if the intellectual initiative is going to be taken out of your hands (thank God!) - by Africa itself. At last the sleeping giant stirs. As I speak the omens are very good indeed that at least one African Government will ask the UN agencies, particularly WHO: "What is this entrapment thing?" "Can you advise us?" "What about an inter-agency consultation on entrapment in the South, tied to resource consumption in the North?" The UN agencies, by their constitution will have to act. The Hardinian taboo will have to lift. I advise you therefore, to save your professional skins, and to act before they do. Remember, WHO is now the WHO of Gro Harlem Bruntland, not that of Hiroshi Nakajima, nor is it the UNICEF of Carol Bellamy, or the UNDP of James Gustave Speth and Richard Jolly.
Worse still, for British demography, you appear to be the lap-dogs of the United States, with no minds of your own. After all, Noam Chomsky did say that in many respects England is a very intellectually colonized country. I have been interviewed by the Central Intelligence Agency of the US State Department. I have been authoritatively warned that my interest in demographic entrapment (which is not supposed to exist) is prejudicial to my personal safety - there's posh! What a crucial demographic research datum! What an indication as to what 'the name of the game' really is! I reply that to perish in such a cause is the greatest reward that this earthly life could conceivably offer any mortal - at 71 no end of an improvement on carcinoma of the rectum. Then why the fuss? Presumably, because entrapment in the South questions resource consumption in the North. So why not question it? By actively policing political correctness over the Hardinian taboo, the US State department is actively preventing humanity from solving its greatest problem - population (for more evidence see ). What a demographic 'discovery'!! Is it really that grave? Yes! Then why not face it?
Yet even worse, for the amour propre of your good selves, when university departments are graded less than five out of five (but not by history), you have allowed the cherry on the demographer's plate, which is what the lifting of the Hardinian taboo really is, to be seized by a pathologist and a priest. After all Charles and I had to invent the term disentrapment, which you had not dared to think necessary. Academia is normally highly competitive. In 'disentrapment' you demographers provide us with no competition whatsoever. There are no other runners in the race to disentrap Africa - Charles Elliott and I are presently alone, although we have some of the staunchest lay supporters. When I pinched one of the anaesthetist's cherries they laid on a jolly good dinner. When I did the same for the surgeons they gave me two of their ties. Demographers, it seems have no ties!
So what to do? I appeal to the younger members of this Society. Your officers have clamped down the Hardinian taboo of intellectual obscurantism on open discussion by a learned society. They have frustrated public debate, and by doing so have failed to generate the intellectual climate in which the UN agencies can develop policies to match the major challenge of our times. By taking the default position in your name (no debate!), they are allowing a continent to proceed to slaughter and starvation with its gravest dilemmas undiscussed. Do you agree with them or don't you? John Seaman has suggested that I provide the Society with a way out. So why not have a Society wide vote as to whether the Hardinian taboo should be lifted, or whether the cosiness of leaving it in the hands of its present officers should continue? Merely debating whether the taboo should be lifted, or not, will of course lift it. Herein is your dilemma. Do you come to grips with reality or don't you? Do you open the debate, or don't you? Your training has hitherto proscribed entrapment as a legitimate field of enquiry - I do hereby give you permission to think - and act! Why don't you form a subgroup specifically to consider entrapment - and what to do about it!
The above piece is marginally (!!!) lacking in 'modesty', for which I shall need "...absolution and remission...", and for which I do crave your forgiveness. The chance of a lifetime to lay it on really thick, to take the Mickey out of the demographers, just couldn't be missed - especially as it is all so crucially necessary! If you argue that this is all too light hearted for the prospect of starvation and slaughter on a continental scale, I reply that, as Lin Utang said, "...we live between tears and laughter...". Poor Malthus turning, squirming and writhing in his grave! Poor Africa...
Incidentally, this view of the world is far from being as 'way out'* as you might think. There are some very concerned and experienced people out there who think that in substance it is 'spot on'. In effect, a harbinger of 'the population future', rapidly coming home to roost at 10,000 people an hour, and the only rational response to it. I appeal again to the young among you: Why not take over the torch and let an old man retire to the long neglected hobbies of his youth?
1. King MH, Elliott CM. Averting a world food shortage: Tighten your belts for CAIRO II. British Medical Journal 1996;313:995-996.
2. King MR Elliott CM To the point of farce: a Martian view of the Hardinian taboo - the silence that surrounds population control. British Medical Journal 1997;315:1441-1443.
Signed...
Lady M. Do tell we what happened. Did you distribute your polemic? Did they blackball* you from the Society?MHK. Indeed I distributed it. There were only four representatives from the developing world and they were all delighted. One of them more or less 'fell about my neck'* with delight. Hopefully I shall follow up disentrapment with all of them.
Lady M. What about the demographers as a whole?
MHK. I hardly felt that I was 'their blue-eyed boy'*, although not exactly 'something the cat brought in'*. Some of the more senior demographers deliberately did not catch my eye,* and seemed to be ill at ease.* I sensed, however, that I had their grudging respect. On the whole I had the feeling that the Hardinian taboo had appreciably lifted, and that the polemic was well adapted to the occasion. Such is the tightness of the lockstep that nobody came out and supported me. In fact we have no demographic support anywhere except for that of Jack Caldwell whose support was expressed by a much appreciated warm handshake.
Lady M. Did you get any support form the younger UK members?MHK. None whatever?
Lady M. Why?
MHK. It is difficult for us to imagine how narrow and insecure they are when they try to come out of the academic cocoons in which they have been nurtured into the cold air of reality. They prefer to remain cosily inside what they are familiar with. They are extremely unadventurous and 'conservative'.
Tim Dyson Lady M. What did Tim Dyson have to say? MHK. On the evening before he was to make his presentation arguing that global food supplies are no problem Tim came up to me in the bar on two occasions. He said so forcefully that I felt I was about to be shaken by the neck, that he would tell the chairman that, although I could ask a question, I was not to be allowed to show a transparency (Figure 4, page 19.) which I had previously sent him, and had had no reply. I did however manage to show it briefly, but there was no discussion. Basia Zaba had some comments to make on it, and these I have since gratefully incorporated.
Lady M. What better argument could there be of its validity?
Basia Zaba Basia Zaba. "All I have ever seen from you is polemics". MHK. "Figure 4 is hardly a polemic, nor is nor is our data on Malawi or Rwanda. Most of the meeting was given over to 'poring over'* minute data. We look at the big picture. I reckon we have the most crucial demographic research datum of all. The fact that we don't have systematic data on all the communities which might be trapped is because no funding agency will fund the research to find out. We have applied many times."
There is however an important sense in which Basia is right. A polemic is a 'controversial discussion' (OED) - in the jargon of entrapment 'benign uproar' - which is exactly what we want. The existence of of entrapment as a grave phenomenon is not in doubt, however useful it would be to have more systematic data. Fundamentally, whether to recognize or not to recognize entrapment - and what to do about it - is an ethical and political 'attitude of mind', it is not a straightforward logical decision. And it is for this this reason that 'benign uproar', vigorous argument - polemics - are so necessary. (See the recognition of entrapment as an ethical and political act, and whether or not one cares about Africa and India)"
Basia Zaba. "All you are is 'malthusian'." (Zaba's argument).
MHK. "Again, in a real sense yes, in the sense that Malthus was also concerned by starvation and slaughter, although he had less to say about the latter. Contemporary demography is presently highly antimalthusian - as confirmed by the tenor* of this meeting, and particularly by Tim Dyson's insistence that global food is no problem. Demography scrupulously avoids the prevention of starvation and slaughter."
"We are concerned with the diagnosis of the 'premalthusian condition' - before starvation and slaughter have broken out - and especially about what to do about it."
"By our definition a community is demographically trapped if it exceeds the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem, and its opportunities for migration, and the ability of its economy to generate the necessary exports, and therefore the necessary imports, and therefore proceeds to starvation and slaughter. It is also trapped, if, because its population is increasing, it is expected to be in this unhappy state before long . This is the 'premalthusian condition' (entrapment) in which we are particularly interested - in effect most of Africa. Rwanda, Burundi, and increasingly the eastern Congo are now frankly malthusian. The Belgian administration were particularly worried about Kivu."
"Contemporary demography studiously avoids making the 'premalthusian diagnosis', still less does it consider what to do about it."
"Your argument (Zaba's) resembles Tim Dyson's, but whereas Tim argues that the situation does not need a name, you argue that it already has one. To which I reply that the 'premalthusian condition' generally known as 'entrapment' is a crucially necessary concept. It differs from frank malthusianism because people are not yet starving or slaughtering one another - but are set to do so - unless something pretty radical is done about it. Entrapment is a well recognized technical term not invented by us, taboo though it may be. I reckon that both your argument and Tim Dyson's are false, and are purely linguistic escapes from a tragic reality."
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