Emerging AI Technologies Pandemic Crisis & Radical Creative Solutions Questions Questions: 1. Building on Chapter 5 and documentary, how will the emerging

Emerging AI Technologies Pandemic Crisis & Radical Creative Solutions Questions Questions:

1. Building on Chapter 5 and documentary, how will the emerging AI technologies impact population growth, migration, and urbanization in the near future?

2. How will the pandemic crisis impact these trends allowing for a slowing of some things and a speed up of other things described in #1?

3. What radical creative solutions or new behaviors might we come up with to find relationships, community, and work in this context? How might this also impact fertility, mobility, and urban life as we knew it?

In the Age of AI (full film) | FRONTLINE (链接到外部网站。)

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Teens, Social Media, and Technology (full film) | FRONTLINE (链接到外部网站。) 134 Chapter 5
Table 5.1 Population, Annual Growth, Doubling Time, Projected Growth, 10,000 B.C.
to A.D. 2050
10,000
B.C.
Year
0
2030
2050
(projected) (projected)
1750
1950
2000
16
252
771
2,330
6,100
8,539
9.869
Chapter 5
Population Growth,
Migration, and
Urbanization
Population
(millions)
Annual
growth (%)
Doubling
time (years)
0.008
0.037
0.064
1.845
1.400
1.000
8,369
1,854
1,083
116
51
70
SOURCE: Data from Population Reference Bureau, 2016, http://www.prb.org/pdf16/prb-wpds2016-web-2016.pdf/
Learning Objectives
5.1 Describe the issues with the Malthusian framework used to explain
population growth.
5.2 Describe the determinants of population change according to the
demographic transition theory.
5.3 Explain how global economic expansion changed reproductive
behaviors and population growth.
5.4 Describe how migration has contributed to urbanization and the
growth of slums.
5.5 Summarize the two perspectives of population growth.
increased at an annual growth rate of 6 per 1,000, reaching 2.5 billion by 1950. In the
following five decades, it has more than doubled, at a growth rate of 18 per 1,000, to
reach more than 6 billion in 2000. We passed 7 billion in 2012, and the UN estimates
that we will almost reach almost 10 billion by 2050 (United Nations 2004). Growth in
world population is summarized in Table 5.1.
The rate of population growth over the last sixty years has prompted concern that
the world is poised on the brink of disaster; that we are running out of enough food
to sustain the growing population; and that population growth is responsible for pov-
erty, environmental destruction, and social unrest. Moreover, so the argument goes, eco-
nomic development in poor countries is impossible as long as populations continue to
rise, because any increase in economic output must be used to sustain the increased
population instead of being invested to create new jobs and wealth. These concerns have
led to concerted efforts by international agencies and governments to control the rate of
population growth, especially in peripheral countries where it is highest (see Table 5.2).
A number of people, however, seriously question whether population growth is
a problem. Some economists argue that population growth is a positive factor in eco-
nomic development; some environmentalists claim that environmental destruction is
a result of rapid industrialization and capitalist consumption and investment patterns,
not population growth; and some religious authorities are opposed to any form of
birth control.
In addition to growing, the earth’s human population is moving. Over the past
two centuries there have been major waves of global migration, the first from about
1870 to 1920 when some 600,000 to a million people a year moved, largely from Europe
to the New World, and the second, beginning around 1980 and continuing today.
Migration, along with population growth, has also generated alarm, so much so that
political parties in the United States, Europe, and Australia have made controlling im-
migration a significant (if not only) policy concern.
There is not now, nor has there ever been, too much global migration. The world
would clearly be better off with more migration. The problem is, therefore, not that
there is too much global migration, but, rather, that we do not yet have effective
ways whereby the gainers from global migration can compensate the losers. The
problem is not global migration. The problem is a lack of political will.
– TIMOTHY J. HATTON AND JEFFREY G. WILLIAMSON, Global Migration
and the World Economy
… the cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and steel as envi-
sioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely constructed out of
crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood. Instead of
cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first century urban world
squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay. Indeed, the
one billion city dwellers who inhabit postmodern slums might well look back with
envy at the ruins of the sturdy mud homes of ÇatalHüyük in Anatolia, erected at
the very dawn of city life nine thousand years ago.
-MIKE DAVIS, Planet of the Slums
Table 5.2 Population and Projected Population Growth for World Regions 2016
Population
(millions)
Births
per
1000
Deaths
per
1000
Rate of
Natural
Increase
Projected
Population
2030
Projected
Population
2050
World
7,418
20
8
12
9.869
8,539
1,298
1,254
11
10
1
1,322
Some modern research on the genetic structure of human populations suggests that we
are all descended from a relatively small number of individuals, and no more than a
few families, who lived in Central Africa as recently as 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. By
15,000 years ago, their progeny numbered 15 million (the present population of Buenos
Aires). The world population at the time of Christ had increased to about 250 million
(a little less than the present population of Indonesia) and on the eve of the Industrial
Revolution had tripled to about 700 million (a little more than twice the size of the cur-
rent population of the United States). In the following two centuries, the population
6,164
22
7
15
7,241
8.548
More Developed
Less Developed
Less Developed
(excluding China)
Least Developed
4,778
24
7
17
5,821
7,195
962
33
9
24
1,318
1,923
SOURCE: Data from Population Reference Bureau, 2016, http://www.prb.org/pdf16/prb-wpds2016-web-2016.pdf
133
Population Growth, Migration, and Urbanization 135
136 Chapter 5
As we shall see, however, the situations, both in terms of population growth
and migration, are more complex than presented in public debates. To understand
better the demographic and ideological issues involved in the population debates,
we need first to examine the major frameworks used to explain population growth,
the Malthusian or neo-Malthusian position, and the framework provided by de-
mographic transition theory. We will try to show how they are seriously flawed,
ethnocentric, and self-serving for core nations. Then we examine some of the fac-
tors known to determine how many children are born and specifically examine
what anthropology can contribute to the debate over population growth. Then
we will examine the issue of migration, particularly the economic impacts of both
legal and illegal immigration, and finally examine urbanization and the growth of
global slums.
economic innovations will provide only temporary relief because the gains are quickly
offset by the increase in population. They conclude that the only way economic devel-
opment can provide benefits is for these countries to lower their birth rates. The gov-
ernments of most countries must agree, because 127 countries, representing 94 percent
of the world’s population, express support for family planning.
Economist J. E. Meade (1967; see also Livi-Bacci 1992) provided a parable to illus-
trate what he saw as the folly of population growth. He tells of two imaginary coun-
tries, Sterilia and Fertilia. Sterilia is a coastal country with a democratic government
and an ethnically mixed population. Fertilia, an inland country with a homogeneous
population, is ruled by upper-class landowners who have little contact with the out-
side world. Both countries were colonized, and both received their independence at
the same time and had similar demographic characteristics—high fertility (birth rate)
and high mortality (death rate). Mortality, however, was sharply reduced in both coun-
tries by DDT spraying, which eliminated malaria-bearing mosquitoes, and penicillin
administration, which controlled several diseases.
Sterilia’s government promoted economic development and to that end instituted
a well-organized family planning program. The imperial elite of Fertilia, however,
did little to control their growing population. Consequently, the surplus rural popula-
tion flooded into the cities, and economic capital had to be used to support the grow-
ing number of poor, leaving little to invest in education, roads, communications, and
health. People in Sterilia, however, began having smaller families and were able to
save money, which became capital for economic investment. Their well-fed, healthy,
efficient workers produced and sold products and goods that earned more money
to be invested in education, creating a still more efficient and profitable workforce.
Consequently, Sterilia surged ahead, with growing commerce, increasing literacy, and
expanding health programs, whereas rtilia became trapped in a spiral of increasing
poverty. The moral of Meade’s parable is clear: Those countries that institute success-
ful programs of birth control will prosper; those that do not will suffer economic and
social decline. But is that really true?
The Malthusians Versus
The Revisionists
5.1 Describe the issues with the Malthusian framework used to explain
population growth.
Interest in the effects of increasing population dates back at least as far as Reverend
Thomas Malthus’s famous Essay on the Principle of Population, written in 1798. This
essay outlines his well-known argument that whereas population “increases in a geo-
metrical ratio,” the resources for survival, especially food, “increase only in an arith-
metical ratio” (see Livi-Bacci 1992:76). Without preventive checks to control fertility,
such as “moral restraint” or “marriage postponement,” argued Malthus, population
will constantly increase, deplete resources, and bring into play “positive checks”-
famine, disease, and war—that will return population to a balance with resources.
Malthus had some historical confirmation for his ideas. For example, he predicted
that as population rose and the demand on resources increased, food prices (e.g., that
of grain) would increase and result in increased mortality rates. Indeed, this seemed
to have been the case in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Likewise,
he predicted that a decreased demand because of population decrease would result in
lower prices, decreased mortality, and a subsequent rise in population, exactly as oc-
curred in Europe after the plague epidemics of the fourteenth century.
Malthus predicted that disaster was imminent. What he failed to foresee was that
in the face of increasing population, innovations in agricultural techniques would
result in constantly increasing food production. Even though the world population
today is at least seven times what it was in 1800, there is still more than enough food
produced worldwide to support the population.
In spite of Malthus’s failed predictions, others have recently revived his message,
arguing that, although Malthus may have been wrong in his early projections, no one
could foresee the explosive growth of population in the past fifty years. Food pro-
duction, they say, is now beginning to fall behind population growth, and even in-
novations that improve production are only stopgap measures. Neo-Malthusians may
disagree on how close we are to disaster, but they unanimously agree that unless we
take measures to reduce population growth, especially in the periphery, the whole
planet faces ruin. The consequences of this population growth, they say, are now all
around us in overcrowded cities, polluted environments, increased crime, and mas-
sive immigration. But their arguments have the most far-reaching implications in poli-
cies regarding economic development. It is impossible, according to neo-Malthusians,
for
poor countries to escape poverty when their populations grow at a rate greater
than 2 percent per year because resources that could be used to increase living stan-
dards must instead go to maintaining the people added to the population. Thus, any
The Case of India and China
We do have a real-life Sterilia and Fertilia—China and India, countries that together
represent 38 percent of the population of the periphery. Since the early 1950s, India,
the Fertilia of our parable, has promoted family planning programs but with little
success. When early attempts to convince couples to have fewer children failed, the
government tried more coercive means, attempting to pass laws requiring sterilization
after the third child (one province passed such a law but never enforced it). When that
failed, the government attempted to convince women to use an intrauterine device,
but this failed because of exaggerated rumours about the dangers of the devices. Oral
contraceptives were never authorized for use in India. Consequently, the policy of
population reduction has not been successful. Although the birth rate fell from 5.97
children per woman in 1950 to 3.3 in 2000, increases in life expectancy decreased the
population growth rate over the same period from 2 percent to only 1.8 percent per
year. In 2016 the population of India reached 1.325 billion.
China, our real-life Sterilia, embarked on a concerted effort to control population
growth in 1970, twenty years after India. In 1980 they developed a program to ensure
that their population of 996 million would not exceed 1.2 billion by the year 2000
(It reached 1.379 billion in 2016). The government instituted policies to raise the age
at which people could marry, increase birth intervals, and limit the number of children
couples could have to two. Provincial leaders were assigned birth quotas, and groups
were formed to encourage the use of contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion, which
was widespread, free, and did not require the husband’s consent. Later, a one-child
policy was encouraged by providing incentives for those complying (higher wages,
页码:148/418
Population Growth, Migration, and Urbanization 137
138 Chapter 5
This billboard in China promotes
family planning and idealizes the
single-child nuclear family. The fact
that the child is female is a significant
attempt to make acceptable a single
female child in a society in which only
males can continue the ancestral line.
SOURCE: Alain Le Garsmeur/Getty Images
为四化一对夫妇只生一个孩
larger houses, priority for children’s education, and free medical care) and penalties
for those not complying (wage cuts, smaller houses, and lower priorities for education
and medical care).
In spite of public resistance and a population with a large number of women of re-
productive age, China has succeeded where India failed. Population growth fell from
2.2 percent in 1970 to 1.4 percent in 1990 and to 0.877 percent in 2000 and in 2016.
Whereas India’s population in 2025 will be four times what it was in 1950 (presently
growing at a rate of 1.2 percent), China’s population will have increased by a factor of
less than three. One would predict, therefore, that the rate of economic growth will be
higher in China than in India.
But that hasn’t happened. As we noted in Chapter 1, both countries have among
the most thriving economies in the world. India’s growth rate was more than twice the
world average-more than 9 percent in 2006 and 2007, falling to about 5 percent in the
wake of 2008 global downturn, and rising again to about 7.3 percent in 2016. China’s
economy grew at almost 8 percent in early 2009, in spite of the global downturn, after
averaging some 8 percent to 11 percent over the previous decade, and has leveled off at
about 6.7 percent in 2016. Moreover, if we compare economic growth and standard of
living as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP) of poor countries in general to
population growth in those countries, there is no relationship. If we measure progress,
as some have suggested, by an index of social freedom, India ranks well above China
(see Livi-Bacci 1992:186–187). There are still significant differences between India and
China: China has done notably better in improving the quality of life of the bulk of its
population, ranking ahead of India in areas such as literacy, health care, life expectancy,
and nutrition. But these improvements are largely attributed to China’s social policies
and seem to have little to do with the rate of population growth.
Economists and demographers who have examined the connection between eco-
nomic development and population growth in other countries have discovered little
evidence that population growth inhibits economic development. In fact, historically,
population growth correlates with economic prosperity, whereas population decline
or stability is generally associated with economic stagnation or decline. For example,
from 1820 to 1987, the population of the four leading Western nations (Great Britain,
France, Germany, and the United States) grew by a factor of 5.5, whereas their com-
bined GDP (in constant prices) increased by ninety-three. In other words, while pop-
ulation increased five times, production increased seventeenfold. After reviewing
studies that examine the relationship between demographic and economic growth,
demographer Massimi Livi-Bacci (1992:145) concluded that during the past two centu-
ries, population growth has not hindered economic development and that quite pos-
sibly the reverse is true, with the countries that experienced the greatest population
increase assuming the leading role in the global economy.
Does the real-life failure of the parable of Fertilia and Sterilia mean there is no
connection between population growth and economic development? That’s difficult to
say, but it does suggest that the connection is obscured by factors that probably cancel
each other out. It also means population growth has not been an insurmountable ob-
stacle to economic development.
The Issue of Carrying Capacity
Even if we accept the idea that population has not yet inhibited economic growth,
can we say, as many neo-Malthusians do, that although we haven’t felt the impact yet, the
reduced doubling time of the population will soon result in the human population exceeding
the carrying capacity of the earth? Biologists use the term carrying capacity to denote the
maximum number of organisms a given environment will support. For example, we
can examine the types of food that sustain wolves in a specific environment and, by
calculating how much of that food is available, estimate the number of wolves the
environment will support. This is the kind of assumption Malthusians make about the
human population: Given food and other resources on the planet, how many people
can survive before those resources are depleted? For example, David Pimentel and
his associates (1999) estimate that, because of declining fertile land, declining water
resources for irrigation, and declining fertilizer usage, by the year 2100, the world will
be able to support only a population of 2 billion people living at a standard half that of
the United States in the 1990s.
However, the problem with applying the theory of carrying capacity to human be-
ings is that our capacity for culture and symbolic thought enables us constantly to alter
our diets and the way we exploit the environment for food. It is true, for example, that
a given environment will support only so many people who live by gathering wild
plants and hunting wild animals. But when a gathering and hunting society exceeded
the population a given area could support and were restricted from migrating to an-
other area, they could and did begin to plant and harvest their own plants and herd
and breed their own animals. Later, when agricultural populations began to grow,
they started farming and developing techniques that allowed them to grow more food
on the same land. Human beings are capable of constantly changing the rules of sub-
sistence by altering their resource base. In fact, estimates of the Earth’s carrying capac-
ity vary widely, from 7.5 billion to 147 billion, depending on the technology employed
to produce food (Cohen 1995; Livi-Bacci 1992:207). Consequently, it is difficult if not
impossible to predict when our ability to provide for additional people will end, if
ever. And that is one of the major arguments between Malthusians an…
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