Thesis RP PDF
Thesis RP PDF
Thesis RP PDF
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I wish to express my profound gratitude to Professor Søren Rud PhD for his
human empathy, his capacity for interpersonal relationships and the interest he has
shown in bringing this research study to a successful conclusion. His wise and pertinent
opinions, contributions and suggestions helped me to develop my professional abilities,
strengthened my learning process and enriched the contents of the research.
I dedicate this thesis to the two most important people in my life: my daughter
Maya and my mother Roma.
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INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................................ 2
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................. 4
3
4.1. The Subjects/actors in the discourse. ..................................................... 40
4.2. Surface Reading ................................................................................... 40
4.4. The ideological unity of the discourses and the discursive matrix ......... 50
4.4.1. The power effects of the discourses and the interpellatory and ....
interpellated Subjects. ......................................................................... 51
4.5. The historic conflict situation and the political dénouement in population
policies ........................................................................................................ 55
4.6. Partial conclusions .............................................................................. 56
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ABSTRACT
The subject of this research study is the analysis of hegemonic and counter-
hegemonic population policy discourses (1945-1994). The study focuses on the
analysis of the discourses of ―Population Control‖ and ―Gender, Human Rights and
Reproductive Health.‖ The protagonists of these discourses are the US State and the
Global Women‘s Health and Rights Movement (GWHRM), who relate to each other
through conflict and dispute hegemony in the field of population policy. These
relationships are analysed in the process of social and political struggle, given that
discourses are viewed as a form of social existence of such struggles, in which
―unstable‖ power relations take material form through practices and apparatus to define
population policy. The spaces in which these struggles are examined are the
International Conferences on Population and Development (Bucharest 1974, Mexico
1985 and Cairo 1994), where ―population policy‖ was debated and, in 1994, defined on
the basis of ―Women‘s Voices ‘94 A Declaration on Population Policies‖. In this way,
the discourse affects reality.
The analysis of the two discourses starts and develops by examining the
historical-social conditions of their (direct) production, circulation and reception, based
on which the actors – in different historical contexts – define and recognise certain
economic, political and social problems, analyse the causes of these and propose
solutions. The problem identified by the US state is that of ―population growth‖ in
developing countries. It links this to its ―national security‖ and, consequently, to
address and resolve the problem, it defines ―population control‖ as an international
policy to be implemented by means of aggressive and cultural strategies and through
various apparatus such as the United Nations and other public and private institutions
which operated ―family planning‖ programmes aimed at ―controlling fertility‖ and/or
―women‘s lives and reproductive health.‖
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population policy. The study arrives at final conclusions, one of the most important
being that the determining factor of politics played a key role in the definition of
population policy and consequently the impacts it produced in the design of public
policies and in the sphere of public health.
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I. PART ONE
1. INTRODUCTION
This research study will focus on the analysis of two forms of social
construction of population policies that emerged in the mid-20th century. The policies
are that of ―Population Control,‖ articulated by the US state, and that of ―Gender and
Human Rights and Reproductive Health Rights,‖ articulated by the Global Women‘s
Health and Rights Movement (GWHRM). Both policies and actors will be studied by
means of discourse theory and analysis, using the conceptual-theoretical framework
presented in PART TWO.1
In the time-frame defined, the study will track the most significant ―footprints‖
or relevant events of meaning that reveal how the policies and consequently the
discourses – as well as the theories and ideological concepts that support them – are
socially constructed and interact with reality, based on which their actors identify and
recognise certain problems, analyse their causes and propose how to solve them.
With regard to the ―population control‖ discourse, the research will examine:
First, the main theories and ideologies that gave rise to it and upon which its
discursive production is based, and which serve the US state3 as a ―conceptual-
theoretical framework‖ for interpreting and understanding the political, economic and
social reality that presents itself as problematic in the post-World War II context.
1
Cf. Infra. PART TWO. ―Conceptual-Theoretical Framework and Methodology‖.
2
Throughout this global history - between of the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War -
hegemonic nation states have consolidated and benefited from the process of globalization; such as the
United States of America, which has been instrumentalizing its power and promoting its policies. The
role played by this actor indicates that policies are fundamentally shaped by human agency, and hence
politics, around which are defined and implemented policies based on the hegemonic interest in conflict
with other actors, (Enciclopedia de la Globalización, Vol. II, 2007: 565-568) as will be developed in this
paper regarding ―population policy‖.
3
The US state does not just ―make use of‖ these theories and ideologies; these also interpellate it and
consequently constitute it as a Subject of social and political action (Cf. PART TWO); as such, it
produces the discourse of ―population control‖ and the respective population policy.
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Second, I will examine the analysis made by the US state of the ―problems‖
arising from a specific phenomenon in reality – the ―population explosion‖ or the fast
pace of ―population growth‖ detected in less developed countries – which it posed as a
problem (linked to its national security). I will investigate why the US state defined this
as a problem, how it analysed its causes, and the solution it proposed, which led to the
definition of ―population control‖ as an international policy and its subsequent
implementation, especially in ―poor regions of the world‖.
Third, with regard to the implementation of the policy, I will examine firstly
why women in less developed countries were constituted as the main ―object‖ of this
policy and how the policy affected their health, and secondly how the policy was
implemented and took material form at the national level through various public and
private institutions and through international organisations such as the United Nations
(UN).
Fifth, I will examine how the hegemony of the dominant discourse (―population
control‖) is articulated, dismantled and rearticulated in this process, and how it enters
an ―organic crisis‖ as a result of the shift in power relations. In methodological terms,
this leads me to study the cycle of the social conditions of production of discourses and
to analyse how the ―counter-hegemonic‖ discourse is articulated and constituted in
relation and opposition to the former discourse. In my research study, the ―counter-
hegemonic‖ discourse is the ―Gender, Human Rights and Reproductive Health Rights‖
discourse produced by the GWHRM.
With regard to the Global Women‘s Health and Rights Movement (GWHRM), I
am interested in examining:
First, the way in which this actor – in contrast to the other – arose from civil
society, bringing together various different movements (and tendencies within them) at
the global level. 4 Second, and in relation to this, I will analyse the movement‘s struggle
4
The GWHRM brought together women from the feminist movement and non-feminists, whose struggle
for recognition of their rights has taken many different forms at different moments in history. In the
developed countries, particularly the UK and the United States, women mobilized to gain access to contraceptives
and for the right to vote long before women in the developing countries, where women‘s struggle has always been
linked generically to the demand for economic and social rights and the defence of their rights as workers (in other
words, class-based rather than gender-based demands). (Schoijet, 2007)
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for the recognition and defence of women‘s human rights and reproductive health
rights. I will therefore examine the process through which this actor defined and
recognised ―the violation of women‘s human rights and reproductive health rights‖ as a
social and political problem, and the reasons why it identified the implementation of
the ―population control‖ policy (which focused on ―reducing fertility‖ to limit
―population growth‖) as one of the causes of this problem (though not the only one)
and, consequently, took action to address and resolve the problem.
Fourth, as in the case of the previous discourse, this process will be examined
by looking at the political and social struggles unleashed as a result of the demand for
these rights. I will therefore proceed to analyse how and in what settings the social
forces that produced this discourse came together, and at what moment the GWHRM
constituted itself as its ―organic expression‖ and as a contestatory force capable of
articulating a collective will, whose efficacy and power can be measured and examined
in terms of the paradigm shift that took place in population policy. I will therefore
analyse the process through which the counter-hegemonic discourse – and the
contestatory actor – gradually gained legitimacy, altering the power relations that are
established in certain contexts and circumstances, as well as the respective spaces and
settings in which the confrontation takes place. These are – or are identified in this
study as – the International Conferences on Human Rights held in Tehran (1968) and
Vienna (1991), the conferences held during the UN Decade for Women in Mexico
(1975 and 1984) and the Conferences on Population and Development held in
Bucharest (1974), Mexico (1985) and Cairo (1994).
The discursive cycle I will analyse with regard to ―population policy‖ comes to
an end in 1994, when the ―organic crisis‖ of the ―population control‖ discourse became
evident at the Cairo Conference. Like any crisis, this has been identified by various
researchers as the midwife of a ―new paradigm,‖ thanks to which women – who had
been consigned ―ad eternam‖ and in perpetuity to the status assigned them by global
patriarchy as the object of population policies – moved to being the subject and
beneficiaries of such policies, due to the collective action taken forward by the
GWRHM, whose struggle was closely connected to gender demands that linked
―reproduction‖ to politics and public health.
In PART FOUR I will carry out a comparative analysis of the two discourses,
focusing on a ―technical discourse analysis‖ 5 to examine the internal organisation of the
semantic utterances or ideological elements present in the discourses, and the way in
which they are articulated around the ―hegemonic principles.‖ According to the
conceptual-theoretical framework, this is what gives discourses their ―class character‖.
5
Cf. PART TWO, ―DISCOURSE ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE‖.
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In other words, it is the ―hegemonic principle‖ that will define the ―character‖ of
population policy for a 20-year period.
The technical analysis will also enable me to identify: a) the structural poles of
the discourses, or the structure and logic of how they are organised and how they
function, based on the dichotomous relationship produced by the power relations
between the Subjects/actors, and between these and their addressees, and the historical
conditions of their social existence. On this basis, I will examine the key propositions
of the discourses, their ideological unity and discursive matrix, and the operations of
discursive practice, which refers to the utterances constructed by the addresser using
elements from the political imaginary and its links with the areas of ―knowledge‖ and
―order‖ in the discourse. With this analysis, the research comes to an end, arriving at
final conclusions in PART FIVE. The bibliography is presented in PART SIX.
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II. PART TWO
The author thus suggests that the historical process of social and political
struggle should be thought of as the site where discursive representations are
articulated, because it is this process that constitutes the material basis of discourse.
Therefore, discourse is defined as a particular form of social struggle, while its analysis
refers to the social process of producing sense and meaning. In methodological terms,
discourse can be studied by examining: a) the social conditions of its direct production,
which are unique, singular and non-repeatable; b) the conditions in which it circulates,
and c) how it is received or its power effects (Ipola 1982: 82)6.
The analysis of […] a discourse from the angle of its direct production […] consists of
identifying the social, political and ideological determinants […] that are present in it in
the form of specific ―footprints‖ (1982: 82-83).
The analysis of direct production covers just one moment in the social
production of a discourse. It is therefore necessary to address the process of how it is
received. This alludes to its effectiveness, or the effects produced by the discourse on
certain material and social conditions.
The analysis of […] how a discourse is received consists above all of bringing to light
the ―footprints‖ that give rise to the social effects of that discourse (1982: 84).
6
Self-identified as a neo-Marxist, Ipola adopts the methodological approach used by Karl Marx to
analyse the process of production of goods in ―Das Kapital,‖ which refers to the process of production,
circulation and consumption of goods.
11
the ―interpellation‖ and the ―constitution‖ of individuals as subjects […]. The act of
interpellation is located in […] the discourse production process […] which takes place
under certain social (economic, political and ideological) conditions […] The effect of
constituting individuals as subjects is its exact opposite […] The discourse is received
under certain social, economic, political and ideological conditions (Ipola 1982: 113).
If these ideological elements do not express social classes, but if the classes ultimately
determine the ideology, we would have to conclude that this determination can only
result from the establishment of a principle of articulation of these ideological
elements, and that this principle is what truly confers upon them a class status (Mouffe
1980: 23).
This leads us to take up the distinction made by Laclau (1986: 186) between the
form and the content of an ideology: form should be understood as the principle that
articulates its constitutive interpellations, while content is understood as the ideological
elements (semantic units) of the discourse in question. Thus, the class (gender, ethnic
or other) identity of a discourse is provided by its form rather than by its content. For
Ipola (1986: 103), it is this articulatory principle that ensures the condensation effect
upon which the unity of a discourse rests, and which operates to constitute the unity o f
ideology and discourse. Therefore,
The measure of the hegemonic potential of a discourse is its articulatory capacity […]
to include interpellations that differ in scope and nature – some classist, others non-
classist – in a relatively structured whole. Therefore, what can effectively be defined by
class is the (hegemonic) project within which that articulation operates (Ipola: 103).
When the articulatory principle breaks up and another takes its place, this gives
rise to a crisis of hegemony. At this point, the political-ideological setting of social
struggles is seen as a disputed space in which several discourses clash and circulate,
accompanied by a series of social practices whose aim is to develop hegemony.
Therefore, multiple discourses circulate when the hegemonic discourse enters into
crisis.
Producing, processing, transmitting and dictating the conditions in which ideologies are
appropriated in society (…), functioning as centres of production, (…) reception and
appropriation of discourses (Ipola 1982: 85).
The set of social relations is contradictory at all times and there is always the possibility
of a rupture in the balance of forces […] which will be expressed as an organic crisis, a
crisis of hegemony, or a crisis in the State as a whole (Buci Gluksman 1988: 97).
The most openly political phase […] in which discourses/ideologies, which had
germinated beforehand, become ―partisan,‖ clash and enter into a struggle, until such
time as one of them, or a combination of them, tends to prevail, to impose itself and to
be disseminated, especially in the social arena (: 118).
This is how social and political struggles ―have a constitutive effect on the
meaning and function of discourses‖ (Ipola: 1982: 90). Therefore,
This is why discourse analysis must describe the power relations that are channelled
through different apparatus, in order make it clear that the conflict between discourses
does not arise ―out of the air‖; on the contrary, these are
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struggles in which what is at stake is the relations established by the dominant classes,
between power relations and forces that take material form in the apparatus and
discursive relations […]. These are struggles that concern the set of social processes
that produce meaning and the meanings themselves (Ipola: 1982: 92).
The analytical corpus is made up of a set of texts, which in this study includes
both primary and secondary sources.
The primary sources are documents, texts and resolutions from the United
Nations, the US State Department and the GWHRM.
7
Available at:http://www.notivida.org/leginternacional/Declaracion%20de%20Teheran.html
8
Available at:
http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/A.CONF.157.23.Sp?Opendocument
9
Pérez. G. (2000: 68-75).
14
- Report of the International Conference on Population 1984. Mexico City
6-14 August 1984 (United Nations E/CONF.76/19)10.
2.1.1.2. Secondary Sources: All the texts listed in the bibliography in PART
SIX.
This reading identifies the interpellating subject – the addresser of the discourse – and
the interpellated subject – the addressees13 – and then proceeds to examine the
frequency of the semantic units that are present or produced in the texts of the corpus.
These function as pivotal indicators that can be grouped by differentiating the semantic
field in its relation of equivalence and opposition (Landi, 1992). The reading also
examines how they are linked to each other (Verón, 1987), which leads to the in-depth
reading.
This reading involves identifying and analysing the broader semantic units, also
known as ―Meta‖ units because they articulate others around themselves and function
as symbols of the others (Verón 1987)14. It is around these units that the effectiveness
10
Available at: http://www.choike.org/documentos/conf/ICP_mexico84_report.pdf
11
Available at: http://www.un.org/popin/icpd/conference/offspa/sconf13.html
12
Available at: http//www.jstor.org/stable/2938478?seq=1
13
The addressees are: the pro-addressee, who shares the same ideas, values and objectives as the
addresser; the counter-addressee, who is the adversary or negative addressee; and the para-addressee,
who is neither a supporter nor an adversary but rather the person the addresser is trying to ―persuade‖ to
join its ranks, or the disputed third party (Verón 1987).
14
The category ―broad‖ or ―meta‖ is applied to semantic utterances and to entities (Subjects/actors). For
entities, Verón coins the term ―identity meta-collectives‖, and the GWHRM is an example of one of
these because it is an entity that is broader than ―singular identity collectives‖ (―women‖, for example)
15
of the articulation of the structural poles of political discourse operates, and through
these structural poles the ―articulating and/or hegemonic principle‖ becomes intelligible
(Lazarte, 1993).
a) The structural poles of the discourses, or the structure and logic of how
they are organised and how they function, based on the dichotomous relationship
produced by the power relations between the Subjects/actors. On this basis, the
propositions of the discourse can be examined, leading us to analyse the binary
structure of discursive production. This is often presented in the form of a dilemma that
dichotomizes reality. This therefore needs to be ―interpreted‖ to bring to light how the
opposition is expressed, which takes us to the space of social and political
confrontation at a given moment in time. In other words, the analysis must describe the
conflict to arrive at the dichotomization (Ibid);
b) The ideological unity15 and the matrix of the discourse, also known as the
ideological or ―generative‖ matrix, because it is the basis on which various other
discourses are constructed; in other words, the same matrix produces and reproduces
discourses (Pirelli, 1985: 29-40). Analysis of it enables us to reveal a certain
ideological field; and because the discourse is linked to the ideology, the matrix makes
it possible to examine the components of it that do not vary. In other words, the matrix
can be described as the unvarying structure of the discourse. The process of social and
political struggle may or may not alter a certain matrix and/or the internal organisation
of the elements in the matrix. In both cases, ideological unity is what gives it logical
coherence (Ipola 1982);
and ―plural identity collectives‖ (social movements identified as feminist or non-feminist). Meta-
collectives cannot be ―fragmented‖, except in very specific cases.
15
Cf. Supra Laclau (1987).
16
The relationship between the addresser (interpellating subject) and the addressee (pro-addressee and
para-addressee) is linked to the areas of knowledge and order in the discourse. The descriptive and
didactic components are articulated in the ―areas of knowledge‖ (these components are related to the
―knowledge mode‖ of the addresser, whose ―knowledge‖ is almost always outlined in a ―statement of
fact,‖ based on which the addresser formulates a ―universal truth‖), while the prescriptive and
programmatic components are articulated in the ―areas of order‖ (these components express ―the way
things should be‖ and are related to ―what can be done‖) (Verón 1987: 17-18).
16
e) The power effects of the discourse, in order to identify how the
interpellating Subject produces its interpellations, what power effects these produce on
the interpellated subject (the addressees), and the type of relationship (inclusive and/or
oppositional) that is established with them. According to Verón (1987), this
relationship will be one of inclusion with the ―pro-addressee‖ and the ―para-addressee,‖
and one of exclusion with the ―counter-addressee‖. Thus, the interpellated subject is
defined as the first two addressees, with whom the relationship is inclusive and who
may be interpellated through identity collectives (singular or plural).
Thus, in PART TWO, I have set out the conceptual-theoretical framework and
its discourse analysis technique which will be developed further in PARTS THREE and
FOUR of this research study.
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III. PART THREE
a.1) That ―the human species will grow like the sequence of numbers 1, 2, 4,
8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 […], while the means of subsistence will do so as follows:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10; etc‖ (Malthus, 1798: 60). This equation alludes to a problem
that is based in his essay on the following arguments: ―First: food is necessary to
mankind‘s existence‖; and ―Second: passion between the sexes is necessary and in
practice will maintain its current status‖; therefore, ―the population‘s ability to grow is
infinitely greater than the ability of the earth to produce food for mankind.‖ This
―implies that the difficulty of subsisting will exercise a strong and constant restrictive
pressure on the force of population growth,‖ leading to ―a waste of seed or disease and
death as well as misery and vice, in the case of human beings.‖ For Malthus, ―This
natural inequality […] is the great obstacle […] in the way of the perfectibility of
society‖ (Ibid.). To address the problem, he proposed two types of restraint: preventive
(moral restraint, including abstinence and delayed marriage) and biological (disease,
death and misery). This is illustrated in the passage entitled ―Nature‘s Banquet,‖ where
―A man born into a world which has already been appropriated, if he cannot obtain
food […] he should not in fact be where he is. In Nature‘s great banquet, there is no
place for him at the table. Nature ordains that he must leave‖ (quoted in Beltrán, Lucas
1993: 113).
a.2.) The second hypothesis, which represents a challenge to the political and
governing classes and elites, is that ―the causes of poverty are natural rather than social
in origin.‖ This naturalising of the causes of poverty gave rise to the ―naturalist
17
The theory gained political relevance and influence in the economic and social sphere of the British
empire and a Europe shaken by the French revolution of 1789. In this context, social classes were
becoming an increasingly prominent and weighty consideration in public decisions as the British empire
debated about ―social policies,‖ while in France the ideas of ―fraternity, equality and liberty‖ were
enabling arguments about the progress of ―human reason‖ to take hold. Malthus thought these ideas were
irresponsible and the Essay was his response (Pérez 1994).
18
doctrine‖ and ―biologism,‖ which were the foundations of eugenics (Collantes 2001:
4). Acceptance or non-acceptance of this ideological premise has characterised the
debate between Malthusians and Anti-Malthusians (usually Marxists), expressed in
antinatalist or natalist positions.
In this discourse, one of the ideological elements which helped to coin the term
eugenics in the mid-19th century is the theory of ―degeneracy,‖ which attempted to
provide a ―scientific explanation‖ for ―decadence‖ or ―hereditary decline.‖ It was
introduced by the French psychiatrist Morel (1857) who studied the ―dementias and
mental defects‖ that are signs of ―hereditary decline‖ (quoted by Soloway, 1990). The
inheritance of ―human faculties‖ and ―intellectual genius‖ studied by Francis Galton in
―Eugenics; its Definition, Scope and Aims‖ (1904)19, based on Darwin‘s principles of
natural selection, coined the term eugenics. From then on, eugenics societies
proliferated and came to function as powerful apparatus influencing the sphere of
ideology and discourse and hence social and political life (Farrall 1970, quoted in
Parking, A. 2006). They became an international movement with an influence in
several areas of the state and society after the ―First International Conference on
Eugenics‖ held in London in 1912.
Between the late 19th century and the end of the Second World War, the
eugenics discourse was able to appeal to a significant political, economic and social
18
Cf. Infra.
19
In 1904, a lecture given by Galton at the ―Sociological Society‖ led to the founding of the ―Eugenics
Education Society,‖ which started to publish ―The Eugenics Review,‖ and the Galton Laboratory was set
up. By 1907 the ―Eugenics Society‖ had branches in Birmingham, Cambridge, Manchester,
Southampton, Liverpool, Glasgow and Sydney (Australia). Cf. www.galtonintitute.org
19
elite worldwide, which acted through various state and social apparatus: public and
private institutions such as the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, institutes such as
Planned Parenthood, and international organisations such as the League of Nations and
the United Nations, established at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century
respectively. These aimed to achieve scientific demographic objectives through policies
to ―manage‖ the world population (Adams 1990) 20. ―Eugenismo en el Mundo‖21 cites
several studies in which these objectives were pursued in various parts of the world,
including Israel, Australia, Japan, Spain, Latin America and others. In Virginia, USA,
an emblematic case of eugenics was the Lynchburg colony for ―Epileptics and the
Feebleminded,‖ which carried out the forced sterilization of 8,000 ―defective‖ children
and young people in a ―charitable‖ institution in the name of ―the biological health of
the nation,‖ since "three generations of imbeciles are enough." According to the
documentary, this ―control,‖ which formed part of ―population policy‖ and ―eugenic
sterilization laws,‖ served as a model for Nazi Germany (Bruce, E 1993).
c) The third source that fed into the population control discourse by
identifying population growth as a problem are the proponents of Neo-Malthusian
thinking, who argued explicitly for the need to control population growth, thus laying
the most solid foundations for ―population control‖ (Collantes 2001: 1).
This arose in the 20th century, when ―population growth was described as an
‗explosion‘ requiring ‗contraceptives to prevent overpopulation‘,‖ upon which the
foundation of the Neo-Malthusian movement was established (Mc Laren, Angus 1997).
It was the power of the contraception discourse that inspired them to form an
association in 1900 after their first international conference, which resolved ―to
disseminate information about population growth and exact methods to limit family
size‖. The association partnered with IGOs to facilitate their cause and ―scientized‖
their agenda into a special Committee of the League of Nations. The committee
contributed to the redefinition of population growth as a potentially destructive force
(Szreter, Simon 1993).
20
Adams mentions that noted intellectuals who won Nobel prizes took up eugenics, led its societies and
founded its institutions (which today enjoy international prestige), with funding from a business elite
identified with eugenics such as the Rockefeller Foundation. Some of the most noteworthy are: a) the
winner of the 1912 Nobel prize for medicine, Alexis Carrel (1873-1944); and b) Corrado Gini (1884-
1965), known for his work “Variabilità e mutabilità‖ (1912), in which he developed his method for
measuring inequality, called after him as the ―Gini Coefficient.‖ He was awarded the Royal Prize for
Social Sciences by the ―Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei‖ in 1919. He was president of the is
essay―Societa Italiana di Genetica ed Eugénica‖ and an ideologue of Mussolini‘s population policies in h
“Las bases científicas del fascismo” (1927).
21
Cf. ―El Eugenismo en el Mundo‖ (audio, video and bibliography) In:
http://elnuevordenmundial.wordpress.com/category/eugenics/eugenismo-en-el-mundo/
20
Tendencies within the neo-Malthusian movement include the "birth controllers"
and the ―family planners‖, with which various social, political and economic actors are
identified. Their discourse is characterised by articulating contraceptive methods
around different projects (articulatory principles). Some, such as those of ―family
planning,‖ are social in nature and refer to the exercise of individual rights, advocating
that people (especially women) should be able to decide how many children to have
and when, without renouncing sexual pleasure. Others are biologists and/or birth
controllers, and their discourse was articulated most clearly by Margaret Sanger 22.
The practices of the birth controllers and family planning advocates were
favourable to those actors (private, public, national and international) who identified
with the neo-Malthusians and eugenicists who supported each other, and only
instrumentally included and supported the pro-―family planning‖ movement and the
birth controllers. Thus, their relationships and alliances were historically based on
shared objectives (Hodgson, and Watkins, 1997)23.
Now we have referred to the theories and ideological sources that left their mark
or footprints on the discourse of population control, and consequently took forward
control strategies in line with their approaches, it is important to refer to the
―Demographic Transition Theory‖ and its ―inversion‖, which Hodgson (1988) calls the
US demographic ―orthodoxy,‖ as an element of meaning and a ―footprint‖ in the
population control discourse, which reveals how population growth was made visible
and recognised as a problem, and which was debated in the mid-20th century.
22
Margaret Sanger coined the term ―birth control‖ in ―The Rebel Woman‖ (1914, New York). The link
between the ―birth controllers‖ and ―eugenics‖ (Sanger 1919 "Birth control and racial betterment", Birth
Control Review, 3 (2) was made when in 1919 she joined with F. Gamble, a eugenicist who funded anti-
natalist initiatives in the US and elsewhere and ―population control‖ in less developed countries, to found
the Pathfinder Fund (1957), currently known as ―Pathfinder International‖ (Miller, J. A. (1996), "Betting
with lives. Clarence Gamble and the Pathfinder International", Population Research Institute Review,
(July/August). Sanger was one of the founders of ―Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA)‖.
With the support of its eugenicist and Malthusian allies, this set up the first family planning clinic in
Brooklyn in 1916 (Hodgson and Watkins, 1997, p. 475). It contributed to the strategic design and
implementation of ―family planning programmes‖ after linking up with leaders of the ―Neo-Malthusian
League‖ in Britain and other noteworthy characters identified with eugenics such as psychologist and
sexologist Havelock Ellis, Aletta Jacobs and Dr. Johan Rutgers. By 1927 Sanger was recognised as a
leader of the neo-Malthusian movement in the USA, and was notable for organising and promoting the
first World Population Congress and, after the Congress, for helping to establish the ―International Union
for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP)‖.
Cf.http://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/s/sanger_margaret.htm;
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/margaret-higgins-sanger/
23
They started to separate in the 1980s, with the final split taking place at the International Conference
on Population held in Cairo (1994), when the strategy was redirected towards new objectives, articulated
around the concept of ―sexual and reproductive health.‖ Cf. Infra.
21
d) The Demographic Transition Theory attempts to explain the historical
rupture in population dynamics that is illustrated in Graph 1.
In 1820 world population reached 1 billion and From 3 billon in 1959 to 6 billion by 1999
increased to 3 billion in 1959.
25
Source: US Census Bureau - International Data Base (IDB)
The decline in fertility was presented as a problem, and there was an increase in
efforts and studies to identify the demographic situation, understand its causes and act
to divert it (or not) from its natural course:
Everything that, taken together, defines population policy came about […] at this time.
Because of their emphasis on the importance of fertility, they helped to create the
critical mass of statistics, researchers and resources required to develop a demographic
theory about the changes under way. One of the results was demographic transition
theory, which connected changes in fertility rates to changes in death rates based on
the information available in the most advanced countries (Pérez 1994: 105).
Thus, DTT arose because the studies indicated that fertility always
systematically declined following the fall in the death rate in the most developed
countries, in a close relationship with the industrial revolution, unleashing the transition
24
< http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf>
25
The Census Bureau's latest projections imply that population growth will continue into the 21st century, although
more slowly. The world population is projected to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 9 billion by 2044, an increase of 50
percent that is expected to require 45 years. http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopgraph.php.
22
process. Therefore, it could be shown that the decline in fertility was connected with
the degree of development, and this was perceived as one of the symptoms of its
success.
The present world population growth is unique. Rates of increase are much higher
than in earlier centuries, they are more widespread, and have a greater effect on
economic life, social justice, and -- quite likely -- on public order and political
stability (NATIONAL SECURITY MEMORANDUM 200. Part One: Analytical
Section, CHAPTER I - WORLD DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS, 1974 p. 1).
―The U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from
abroad, especially from less developed countries. That fact gives the U.S. enhanced
interest in the political, economic, and social stability of the supplying countries.
Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates [slow or no
population growth p. 37-38] can increase the prospects for such stability, population
policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of the
United States‖ (Ibid 200, p. 43).
The factors and causes involved in the problem were analysed by Notestein in (1945),
in the ―Office of Population Research‖ at Princeton University, as part of its role of
providing advice on US foreign policy.
Notestein‘s arguments (Szreter, 1993) focused on: a) how unviable it was for
the ―poorest regions of the world‖ to follow a European-style transition. In these
regions, the reduction in the death rate cannot be explained by the slow and progressive
26
The social conditions of production of a discourse (direct production, circulation and consumption) are
linked, forming a cycle.
23
improvement in living conditions achieved with industrialisation, but by advances in
medicine and sanitation transferred from the West; b) the pace of population growth,
considered ―explosive,‖ which coexists with a low level of development of productive
forces (characterised by pre-capitalist economic structures and traditional agrarian
economies), makes their development non-viable, and generates conditions
unfavourable to capital accumulation, because capital is used up by basic social
expenditure on the new and growing younger generations; c) the ―pace of population
growth‖ and ―levels of poverty‖ lead to an explosive situation of social and political
instability (favourable to the spread of Communism), precisely in areas of US
commercial and political expansion, and if the same thing happened in the rest of the
―poor‖ regions of the world, this would create a ―national security‖ problem for the
USA. Considering all these factors, it was decided to ―reverse the terms of the DTT
and affirm that without a prior reduction in fertility, development would never manage
to take off in these countries‖ (Ibid).
Whereas all the scholars had hitherto agreed that economic development triggered the
transition and caused the ultimate reduction in fertility rates, now it was argued that the
reduction in fertility was a necessary condition for development, since rapid population
growth impeded the capital accumulation essential for industrialization (Pérez 1994).
Once population growth in the least developed countries (LDCs) had been
identified as ―an issue of the greatest importance‖ for political and economic reasons,
the US government advocated ―a lessening of population pressures through reduced
birth rates‖ (slow or no population growth, pp. 37-38), because ―population policy
becomes relevant‖ to the economic and political interests of the United States.
(National Security Memorandum 200, 1974 p. 43).
Based on these interests, the strategy proposed that the US should: a) obtain
international agreement and commitments from local leaders to roll out the population
policy, rearticulating in the ―population control‖ discourse some of the ideological
elements articulated in alternative discourses by opposing actors; b) play a leadership
role in family planning, and c) design development policies in aid programmes.
―There is […] the danger that some LDC leaders will see developed country pressures
for family planning as a form of economic or racial imperialism‖ […] ―It is vital that
the effort to develop and strengthen a commitment on the part of the LDC leaders not
be seen by them as an industrialized country policy to keep their strength down or to
24
reserve resources for use by the "rich" countries.‖ […] ―The U.S. can help to minimize
[ideological] charges of an imperialist motivation behind its support of population
activities by repeatedly asserting that such support derives from a concern with: (a) the
right of the individual couple to determine freely and responsibly their number and
spacing of children […]; and (b) the fundamental social and economic development of
poor countries […]‖ (pp. 106, 114 and 155). ―Finally, providing integrated family
planning and health services on a broad basis would help the U.S. contend with the
ideological charge […]‖ (p. 177)
―… something more than family planning services will be needed to motivate other
couples to want smaller families‖ (p. 58). ―The great necessity is to convince the
masses of the population […] to have, on the average, only three and then only two
children.‖ ―… the obvious increased focus of attention should be to change the
attitudes of the next generation‖ (158).
So, if these were the objectives, strategy and methods of the ―population
control‖ policy, I conclude – following Foucault – that this ―population policy‖ was
also a ―tool of power‖ (1984) used to apply family planning programmes and
contraceptive methods, which were also promoted by different movements and actors
such as the ―birth controllers‖ and the ―family planning advocates,‖ who sometimes
established strategic alliances.
Thus, the ―population control‖ policy was formulated with the aim of
controlling fertility. 27 The problem would be solved by formulating and implementing
the ―population control‖ policy, which was in fact
27
From the end of the 1940s until the ‘60s, the movement acted through private US foundations which
promoted and financed research on population, reproductive physiology and new contraceptive methods.
University departments, academic institutions and exchange programmes were set up to train researchers,
technicians and administrators. Laboratories were opened to develop the most modern and effective
contraceptive methods, such as the pill. Prestigious institutions such as the Population Council and the
International Planned Parenthood Federation were established and funded, as were journals that have
become essential to the field of demography today, such as Population Index, Demography or Population
25
The population control programme with the largest political aim ever dreamed of: to
control the world population. The central theoretical framework would be provided
by Notestein‘s DTT, and support would be sought by transferring the mission to the
United Nations itself and trying to turn it into a Programme of Action approved by the
whole world through the International Population Conferences (Perez, 1994).
This policy was implemented and put in practice by setting in motion the
―hegemonic apparatus‖ and it was Notestein himself, as President of the Population
Council and the first director of the Population Division of the United Nations, 1946–
1948, who took charge of the task.28 He had the support of private foundations that
were already operating and practising fertility control from the end of the 1940s until
1961, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Family Health
International in the US, the Voluntary Sterilization Association known as the "Human
Betterment Association of America," "Birthright", ―Negative Population Growth‖ and
others (Embid 118-124). Also involved were the big US foundations such as Ford29,
Rockefeller, Mellon and Carnegie (Caldwell, J. and Caldwell, P. 1986), the CIA
(Frances Stonor 2000) and the US Army, since population was ―a national security
issue‖. The managers and staff of these apparatus were holding public office during the
F. Kennedy administration, when population control was declared an international
policy in 196130. Thus, the federal government (starting with Kennedy, and continuing
with Johnson and Nixon) and its agencies got involved in the promotion, funding and
implementation of ―family planning‖ programmes. The World Bank started to finance
them in 1968, the year of publication of the best-seller ―The Population Bomb‖
(Ehrlich, P. 1968), which acted as the device through which the debate was introduced
to western public opinion.
and Development Review. The CIA got involved in this movement with military advisory committees
that recommended family planning assistance for third world countries, for national security reasons
(Embid, n.d) and (Frances Stonor 2000).
28
During and after Notestein‘s time in office, the Population Council (founded by Rockefeller III)
promoted censuses all over the world. These allowed the ―Population Reference Bureau‖ – also funded
by Rockefeller and working along the same lines as the Population Council since the 1950s (Embid n.d.
119) – to quantify the first results (2,500 million people in 1950, projected to grow by between 500 and
1,100 million in thirty years) and publish them in the 1954 ―Demographic Yearbook‖. That year, with the
aim of ―deepening demographic knowledge,‖ the First World Population Conference was held in Rome.
It resolved to ―encourage the establishment of regional training centres in the third world‖ (Pérez 1994).
The Second World Population Conference (Belgrade 1965) approved the creation of a trust fund for
population matters. Between 1952 and 1958 the Population Council‘s budget increased from 4.5 to 18.3
million dollars, with 8.4 million donated by the Ford Foundation, 3.4 million by the Rockefeller
Foundation, and 2.9 million by the Ellon family. By 1959 its budget had increased to 20 million dollars.
During these years it promoted the development of various hormone-based contraceptives (Embid n.d.
117).
29
The Ford Foundation collaborated with the US government from World War II until the ―neoliberal
revolution‖ promoted by the Reagan administration. It helped to implement state policies by providing
financial support to international development agencies such as the IMF, where it imposed
―professionalization and scientific social work delinked from the class struggle‖. For the CIA, the Ford
Foundation was ―the best and most plausible kind of funding cover‖ as it allowed the CIA to finance "a
seemingly unlimited variety of clandestine action programs that affected individuals, political and social
interest groups, institutions, universities, publishers and other private institutions‖ such as those involved
in ―human rights‖(Petras, J. 2001).
30
That same year, the National Council of Churches in the US approved the use of contraceptives,
reversing its historic position on the issue (Schoijet, 2007: 121).
26
According to the Population Council report (New York), in 1969 ―aggressive
strategies‖ were designed to control the population (Holdren 1977). These were also
agreed at the International Planned Parenthood Federation Congress held that same
year (Embid, 118).
The strategies were: a) massive use of a fertility control agent – sterilants mixed
with drinking water or basic foods – to maintain birth rates at a suitable level; b)
authorised payments per child, to ensure a reproduction rate of 2.2 children per couple,
or a certificate allowing people to have just one child legally; c) temporary sterilization
of all girls by means of a delayed contraceptive implant; d) obligatory sterilization of
men who had fathered three or more live children; e) obligatory abortion for all
illegitimate pregnancies; and f) ―encouragement programmes‖ such as payments for
starting to use or effectively practising contraception or for sterilization, payments for
periods of time without pregnancy or childbirth, savings bonuses for periods of twelve
months with no children born, responsibility awards for each five-year period a couple
lasts without a pregnancy or for vasectomy before the third child, and special lotteries
with tickets given to those who do not have children (Ibid. 118-119).
That same year, the trust fund became the United Nations Fund for Population
Activities (UNFPA), which was later transferred to the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP). In 1971, 65% (US$109.5 million) of the UNFPA budget came
from the United States, 15% from other countries, 1% from the World Bank and 19.2%
from private foundations. 16% of this was contributed by the Ford and Rockefeller
Foundations (Ibid). Several developing countries received conditional aid and officially
announced that they were adopting national family planning programmes (Pérez 1994).
The following examples documented by Embid (1994: 76-91) and others serve
as illustrative cases:
d) The Intra-Uterine Device (IUD) ―with the thread cut‖ was applied to
Brazilian women, who were left sterilized because the device could only be removed in
a surgical operation, and none of the women could afford to pay. 34
e) The ―Norplant Plan‖ developed by the Population Council (New York). This
is a long-lasting (5-year) contraceptive implant. It has side-effects such as blindness,
haemorrhaging, brain tumours and immunodeficiency. Having been used
experimentally on 500,000 women in Brazil, its use was extended to millions of women
in Chile, Colombia, China, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, India, Indonesia,
Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Sweden, Thailand and the US.
31
Chemical sterilization was promoted by Dr. Stephen Mumford from the ―Center for population and
security research‖ and founder of the US organization ―Family Health International‖ (Embid 1994: 90).
32
In the case of Brazil, the International Monetary Fund imposed ―birth rate reduction programs‖ as an
essential condition for debt renegotiation (Embid 1994: 88).
33
The vaccination campaign promoted by the WHO had the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, the
World Bank and the Population Council. The WHO admitted that abortion-inducing HCG was present in
the vaccines, though ―in small doses,‖ as it ―came from the production process‖ (Embid, 1994: 89-90).
34
This was implemented by the "Family Welfare Association" in Brazil, a branch of the International
Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
28
f) The Enorit pill, experimented with on 1,956 women in Puerto Rico in the
1950s and ‘60s by the Puerto Rican family planning organisation ―Asociación pro
Bienestar de la Familia‖.
It was against this policy that the contestatory movement would come together
to defend women‘s human rights and demand sexual and reproductive rights.
Throughout PART THREE, I have examined the process through which the
population control discourse was articulated and socially constructed, culminating in its
formulation and definition as an international policy in 1961. The study of this process
allows us to state that a population policy defined as ―the set of measures that seek to
influence the population growth rate, structures and geographical distribution‖ (Tapinos
1988: 362) is not neutral, because these measures are not ―plucked out of the air‖ but
are instead interwoven with the process of social struggle and production of meaning of
which – in this study – ―population control‖ is one of its expressions.
In this sense, the analysis undertaken allows us to state that the formulation of
the population control policy was the process through which political decisions were
taken to solve ―population growth‖ in less developed countries, which was considered
by the US state to be a problem. As we have seen, inherent in this process is ―the
meaning of the theories and ideologies that have supported and are frequently linked to
the social and political interests which its solution sought to serve‖ (Pérez, J. 1994).
it is relevant to identify the Subject or actor(s) who define it, the ideology and
economic, political and social interests that work to support it, and the hegemonic
apparatus through which it achieves legitimacy and takes material form in social life.
All this leads us to situate the policy in the historical context in which it was defined
29
and the power relations which shaped it, due to which it is vulnerable to ruptures that
usually lead to a paradigm shift in the issue in question (Pérez, R. 1993).35
There were at least three main actors36 opposed to the ―population control‖
discourse that became a policy; but in this paper, the focus is on the Global Women‘s
Health and Rights Movement (GWHRM) which is concerned with women‘s rights,
women‘s health, and women‘s lack of voice in the public and private spheres (Wendy
Harcourt 2006).
The GWHRM emerged in the 1970s. Like any other movement, it is not
homogeneous, and neither is it limited to the feminist movement. It brings together
women‘s organizations from developed and less developed countries, and therefore
links different ideological and political standpoints deriving from diverse social
realities and specific and historical social constructions of gender. It is characterised by
having denounced - with the human rights community - the abuses that were committed
by individuals dismissive of women‘s human rights. 37 Thus, based on the new unifying
principle of ―gender and human rights,‖ it defends the right to reproductive health.
35
As we will see later in PART THREE and in PART FOUR, where I will undertake a comparative
analysis of this discourse and its rival, that of ―Gender and Human Rights and Reproductive Health
Rights‖.
36
The main actors opposed to the policy were: first, the socialist block, for whom overpopulation does
not depend only on the size or density of the population, but also on the ratio of population to available
sustainable resources, and thus the way resources are used and distributed throughout the population
(John F. Besemeres 1980); second, the ―South block‖ constituted by developing world which - through
the Group of 77 - demanded a ―New Economic Order‖ NEO (Encyclopedia of Globalization 2007: 553-
555) to deal with population policy; third, the organized feminist movement concerned with women‘s
rights, women‘s health, and women‘s lack of voice in public and private spheres (Wendy Harcourt
2006).
37
Before constituting themselves as the GWHRM, different women‘s movements and groups forged
alliances with various other actors, in pursuit of the objectives that guided their actions. At the
beginning, there were alliances between a) the ―neo-Malthusian movement‖ and some feminist
movement tendencies from the developed countries known as the ―birth controllers‖ and the ―family
planning‖ movement; b) At the end of the 1960s, the alliance was made with the community of the
30
3.2.1. The “Gender, Human Rights and Reproductive Health Rights”
Discourse. The violation rights as a problem and the women‟s declaration
policies as solution.
The universal concept of human rights set out in the Declaration of 1948 "has a
blind spot on women's human rights‖ (Steiner, H.J. et. al 2000: 158). The assertion of
these rights in the field of sexual and reproductive health followed a distinct historical
process, in the heat of social and political struggles driven by the different strands of
the feminist (and non-feminist) movement in both developed and developing countries,
which finally came together around the GWHRM. The movement worked alongside
the human rights community.
The problem arose because women – the main subjects of reproductive life –
were the object and ―the main victims‖ of ―population control‖ programmes. Thus,
contraceptive methods, which are in fact a means of liberating women by separating
sexual activity from reproduction, became the instruments and devices of population
control, (Ávila, 1989: 18) with a negative effect on women‘s sexual and reproductive
health.
Human Rights Movement; and c) in the 1970s, the alliance began to become comprehensively articulated
between different tendencies of the feminist movement from developed and less developed countries;
finally, they all came together to constitute the GWHRM.
38
With regard to the first point, and focusing only on the causes relevant to this study, it is useful to
mention that ―in the 17th century, human beings were represented by men, while women were seen as
bodily life forms half way between humans and animals. […] In the 18th century, with the clamour for
equality, liberty and fraternity (in the French revolution), women ceased to be seen as an atrophied
version of men and gained their own sex and corporeal nature‖ (Villela, W. and Arilha, M. 2003, pp. 95,
102-103). ―The newly inaugurated world of two sexes‖ did not alter the idea that ―nature had ordained
the basic differences between men and women and, based on these, the functions and roles that the two
sexes should play in society‖ (Roden n.d.: 206). The function of women was to procreate (Villela et al, p.
95), while that of men was to organise the good government and bodily economy of women, since the
development of society depended on the appropriate and efficient management of the bodily
development and reproductive capacity of women (Rohden 2003: 205-206). Consequently, the
differences imprinted by nature on the bodies of men and women located them as occupying different
social positions and functions. In this discursive formation, ―reproduction is the ultimate aim of sexual
relations‖ and ―any sexual expression that focused on pleasure rather than reproduction was rejected‖
(Villela 1992: 104). As a result of this link between sex and reproduction, the normative model was also
that of heterosexuality (Avila 2003: 466), since ―every culture, at every moment in history, constructs
symbols and signs of what is accepted and desirable in sexual terms‖ (Villela 98).
39
The adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN in 1948 marked the start of
―international human rights law and the global system of human rights protection in the setting of the
United Nations‖. The holders of these rights were identified as all human beings, in general and in the
31
of the problem can therefore be identified as the failure to recognise women‘s human
rights, specifically those that relate to sexual and reproductive health (Villela, W. and
Arilha, M. 2003: 95-102), which were violated by the implementation of ―International
Family Planning Programs‖ (IFPP) (Visaria, and Chiaria 1998: 54-64).
The problem has been tackled in three dimensions: a) seeking to deconstruct the
"theories of sexuality and reproduction" in order to build "a new approach that enables
sexual practices to be thought of as separate from reproductive practices" and include
these in the field of human rights; leading to b) a shift from the focus on 'population
control' to family planning that respects human rights and reproductive health; and c)
introducing this approach in the discussion at the International Conferences on
Population and Development, to influence decisions and action plans.
abstract. Later, as a result of the social construction of rights and social and political struggle, the
subjects of rights started to be specified in response to differences between sexes, races and age groups.
It was only in this process that the concept of women‘s human rights began to be articulated and
expressed as meaningful at the International Human Rights Conferences in Tehran (1968), Bucharest
(1974) and Cairo (1994).
32
a) International Conference on Human Rights (Tehran-Iran 1968):
Reproductive rights as human rights.
After the Tehran conference, the feminist discourse on ―our bodies, ourselves‖
gained in strength during the 1970s, and further victories were won at the World
Population Conference held in Bucharest, Romania (1974).
The Draft was altered by a counter hegemonic historic block organized by the
States of developing countries (Group of 77) 42; the socialist states43, and diverse social
40
Cf. Third World Population Conference (ECOSOC Res. 1484 (XLVIII) of 3 April 1970).
41
USA brought as much influence both at formal and informal levels to planning and preparing the
Bucharest Conference within level of expertise, manpower, financial resources, and diplomatic
persistence to approached and establishment population control. Bucharest it was an opportunity to
express what it viewed as a nearly complete consensus regarding the rapid population growth and the
advantages of countries adopting population growth reduction targets (Paige, 2004).
42
The Group of 77 was constituted by the United Nations in 1964 to provide ―a forum for the developing
world to articulate and promote its collective interest relating to the global economy‖ and ―demanded
major changes in the rules governing the global economy‖ (Encyclopedia of Globalization 2007: 553).
According to Finkle and Crane (1975: 92-97), in Bucharest the ―Declaration on the Establishment of a
New International Economic Order‖ (NIEO) and its ―Program of Action‖ (of this Group) was adopted to
33
women‘s movements articulated around the GWHRM, and NGOs. The first two, with
discourses focusing on the construction of a ―New International Economic Order‖
(NIEO), demanded socioeconomic policies that would benefit them and respect their
national sovereignty and universal human rights (UNITED NATIONS (Comp.) 1994).
The third focused on alternative discourses to population control such as family
planning programs guided by a reproductive rights and health rationale. The game
played by the Global Women‘s Health and Rights Movement (GWHRM), and the
right-to-life movement through NGOs, was significant in that the right of individuals
and couples to reproductive autonomy was affirmed at the Bucharest Conference.
So, the ―historic block‖ emerged on the international scene dismantling the
ideological elements of ―population control‖ and articulating devices such as
―development aid and family planning programs‖ linked to ―universal human rights‖
and ―national sovereignty‖. Because of the new correlation of forces, ―human rights‖ as
a new discursive principle won the debate in Bucharest.
The Draft WPPA was revised. The conference approved 44 ―family planning
programs‖ linked to ―human rights rather than population control‖ (Hodgson and
Watkins 1997: 490); with regard to sovereignty, the Plan didn‘t set any international
norm for family size or rates of population growth (Singh, 1998; 3). Countries which
consider their birth rate detrimental to their national purposes may consider setting
quantitative goals, implementing policies and programs (Paige, 2004: 67) ―to be
formulated at the national level within the context of the specific economic, social, and
cultural conditions within each country‖ (Singh, 1998: 2). So, it enshrined the right of
individual countries to determine their own population policies to suit local conditions
and without any outside interference (Boland 1995: 27-28).
Thus, the way in which the problem was addressed in Bucharest was to reaffirm
human rights as the guiding principle for family planning programs, based on a
reproductive rights and health rationale, and ―offering the media information and
education targeted to couples and individuals regarding their reproductive rights‖
(Freedman Op. Cit., 1993: 20).
After Bucharest, the ―population control‖ discourse began to fall apart. Now that
the social and political process had delegitimized it, it entered a crisis from which it would
never recover. The US government changed its strategy once it recognized ―that population
policy is a human concern intimately related to the dignity of the individual and the
objective of the United States is to work closely with others, rather than seek to impose
rectify an unequal and unjust distribution in global wealth, to restructure existing debt repayments and
engage in debt forgiveness, to make technology transfers to the Global South, and to seriously address a
host of others issues championed by the developing world.
43
The Socialist states acted with them as an ant imperialist block against the USA identified as the main
political adversary and so leadership of the West vs. East block in the context of the Cold War interested
in realizing by consensus its ―foreign policy objective‖ (population control) and the resulting strategy
called by them ―Global Population Strategy‖. For the ideology of the communist international
―population growth‖ has solution if the resources of the society are been distributed socially, such as
socialistic system (Besemeres, 1980).
44
The World Population Plan of Action, was adopted by consensus of the 137 countries represented at
the United Nations World Population Conference at Bucharest, August 1974. http://www.population-
security.org/27-APP1.html#Cover
34
our views on others‖ (NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL, WASHINGTON, D.C.
20506)45.
A year after Bucharest, the First World Conference on Women, held in Mexico
in 1975, included two significant elements in its Declaration: a) ―equal rights,
opportunities and responsibilities for women and men,‖ thought of as the ―reallocation
of the functions and roles traditionally assigned to each sex‖ by ―deconstructing and
reconstructing what it means to be a man or a woman‖ (Murube, n.d. 2); and b) the
right to reproductive autonomy, adopting the right to reproductive choice and the
notion of bodily integrity and control47.
The powerful effects of this discourse became evident when in 1979 the UN
adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW)48, which was based on the "double duty to eliminate discrimination
and ensure equality" (Piovesan, 2003: 207).
45
In this discourse, the enunciation ―work with the others‖ doesn‘ t mean that they are no longer
―population controllers‖. To work closely with others, means to take the opportunity to promote their
own new agenda toward the new principle of the human right, and the USA did, taking advantage from
the US feminist and their notion of rights (linked at the liberal ideology) in the sense that ―White House‖
want to link also the policy with ―neoliberal economic policies‖ to curb population growth in the
developing world. So, rearticulating as ―populations controllers‖ their demographic rationale and their
neoliberal economic policies with the new principle, they have agreed ―gave to women another option in
fertility reduction‖ (Paige 2004: 90). So the strategy shift has been successfully from 1975 to 1984,
during the ―UN Decade for Women‖.
46
Three women‘s conferences were held: Mexico (1975); Copenhagen (1980) and Nairobi (1985).
47
Mexico Declaration, states that: Equal rights, opportunities and responsibilities will be achieved
through "reallocation of traditional roles and functions allocated to each sex", means "through the
deconstruction and new construction of what is men and women" (Murube, s/f/).
48
Article 16 declares that member states are obliged to adopt all necessary measures to eliminate
discrimination against women in all matters related to marriage and family relations. In particular, they
must ensure – based on equality between men and women – that women have the same rights to decide
freely and responsibly how many children they wish to have and when, as well as having access to the
information, education and means that will enable them to exercise those rights.
35
Here there was a consensus to understand "women's health" rights as linked to
an agenda for women's reproductive self-determination (CORRÊA, S. and ÁVILA,
M.B. Op. Cit, p. 20). The debate focused on the deconstruction of motherhood as a duty
to fight for the right to abortion and contraception in developed countries (Correa,
1999: 14). This considers reproductive choice as a universal human right (Freedman,
and Isaacs 1993), through which states can be required to adopt preventive and
remedial measures to protect women's reproductive health, giving them the
opportunity to exercise their reproductive self-determination (Cook 1993).
Building on the gains achieved by the GWHRM, this Conference introduced the
duty of governments to make universal access to family planning programs effective.
At the Nairobi Conference (1985), this was linked with the ethical critique of the
demographic approach to population control programs, advocating alternatives against
the dominant norm and rearticulating a new norm of human rights. The human rights
community and the GWHRM worked toward this objective at the UN World
Conference on Human Rights (Vienna 1993).
It can therefore be stated that a new approach to the problem was taking shape
based on the new meanings that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when
women in diverse countries took up the human rights framework and began developing
the analytical and political tools that together constitute the ideas and practices of
women‘s rights (Bunch and Frost 2000: 2).
In the Second World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna (1993)49, the issue
of sexuality, which had been absent from the discourse on international human rights
(Petchesky, n.d 2), was included in paragraphs 18 and 38 of the Declaration and
Programme of Action, which proposed to "eliminate gender-based violence and all
forms of abuse and sexual exploitation," including the trafficking of women,
―systematic rape, sexual slavery, and forced pregnancy‖.
So, after the Conference (1991), reproductive rights (and health) emerged as a
human right, gaining international attention. The global network and actors influencing
49
In Vienna, the States agreed to consider any violation of women‘s specific rights as a violation of
human rights. The Conference was a major shift in human rights theory, because it established that
human rights can be enjoyed both in public and private; and therefore, can be violated in both areas.
There it was determined that human rights are universal, interdependent and indivisible.
36
each other have recognized that woman‘s rights are universal, inalienable, and
indivisible. Consequently:
Thus, the norms supporting population control were further undermined, and
women ceased to be treated as targets and acceptors of family planning programs
guided by the ideology that emerged at the beginning of global history. After Vienna,
women have the right to control their reproductive capabilities or have a right to make
voluntary and informed choices about their reproductive and sexual health. In the
material social processes of globalization, women have articulated and constituted an
alternative oppositional ideology that challenged the norm of ―population control‖ and
constructed one that changed the paradigm on population policies. The latter has its
main expression in the ―Women‘s Declaration on Population Policies‖ (Women‘s
Voices ‗94‖ A Declaration on Population Policies, 1993: 637-640), legitimized at the
United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) that
was held from 5-13 September 1994 in Cairo, Egypt.
reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and
individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their
children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the
highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. It also includes the right of all to
make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence
as expressed in human rights documents.
Thus, "women, the main victims of population control programs, went from
object to subject of population and development programs,‖ when it was resolved that
the issue of population should be addressed from the perspective of reproductive rights
and their recognition. It was thus explicitly defined that population policies should be
guided by human rights. The relationship between population and development clearly
50
Text paragraphs 7.2 to 7.4.
37
accelerated the legal recognition of reproductive rights, as human rights, "born in [...]
conditions characterized by the struggle in defence of new freedoms against old
powers" (BOBBIO 1992: 5).
So, in conclusion, it can be said that the issue was partially resolved at the Cairo
Conference, because:
iii) Effected an ―ethical and moral‖ reform when it stated that the use of
coercion, incentives/disincentives, targets, quotas, or any inducement used to affect
fertility, does not constitute appropriate behaviour by states, agencies, or any other
actor involved in international population policy. Thus, it stated that governments ought
not to pursue an antinatalist or pronatalist agenda in their support of family planning
programs (Paige 2004: 160).
Throughout PART THREE, I have examined the process through which the
―Gender, Human Rights and Reproductive Health Rights‖ discourse was articulated
and socially constructed, culminating in a ―fundamental shift in the design, structure
and implementation of population policies, to the empowerment and well-being of all
women‖ (―Women‘s Voices 94‖, A Declaration on Population Policies, 1993: 637).
38
My study of this process allows me to state that the formulation of this policy:
a) was interwoven with the process of social struggle and production of meaning, in
which the meaning of ―reproductive health and reproductive rights‖ stands out as one
of the expressions cut across by ethical principles that change the orientation of
population policy. Heading the list of these principles is the one stating that ―Women
must be subjects, not objects, of any development policy, and especially of population
policies‖ (Ibid. In: ―Fundamental ethical principles‖, 1993: 638); and b) was articulated
from civil society, once the violation of women‘s human rights and reproductive health
rights was recognised as a social problem after the Tehran conference (1968), and
consequently action started to be taken through a process of collective action that
defined and articulated – over the years between 1968 and 1994 – the main objectives
set out in the ―Women‘s Declaration on Population Policies‖ 51 (Women‘s Voices 94,
pages 639-640). Therefore, the definition and recognition of the problem by civil
society, the analysis of its causes, and the putting forward of objectives together with
proposals for solving the problem – once it started to be dealt with in the arena of
public consideration52 - is what differentiates the definition of this policy from its rival.
This is why it was relevant to identify its Subject/actor – the GWHRM – and the
social movements that determined it, as well as the alliances forged with the human
rights community, thus revealing the process through which established power relations
defined the contradiction that led to the paradigm shift. It can therefore be stated –
following Gramsci (Bucci 1988) – that the GHRHM, through the ―war of positions,‖
managed to exercise an influence that enabled its policy to take material form, based on
the power relations and the correlation of forces that was established. Thus, in the
Global Women‘s Health and Rights Movement (GWHRM) and its Declaration, the US
state came up against a contestatory response to its policy, on the basis of which the
Cairo Programme of Action was rearticulated. The formulation of the alternative policy
was therefore characterised by strictly political decision-making, and policies were
defined on the basis of these political decisions (Barret and Fudge, 1981). This analysis
concludes PART THREE of the study, and I will now proceed to the comparative
analysis of the two discourses.
51
The Declaration sets out six inter-linked objectives as ―minimum program requirements.‖ These are:
1. Reduce and eliminate pervasive inequalities in all aspects of sexual, social and economic life […] 2.
Support women‘s organizations that are committed to women‘s reproductive health and rights and linked
to the women to be served, especially, women disadvantaged by class, race, ethnicity or others factors
[…] 3. Assure personally and locally appropriate, affordable, good quality, comprehensive reproductive
and health services for women of all ages […] 4. Develop and provide the widest possible range of
appropriate contraceptives to meet women‘s multiple needs throughout their lives […] 5. Ensure
sufficient financial resources […] 6. Design and promote policies for wider social, political and
economic transformation that will allow women to negotiate and manage their own sexuality and health,
make their own life choices, and participate fully in all levels of government and society.
52
According to the theory of the sociology of action, ―A social problem does not exist until its existence
is recognised‖ and ―people start to act on it‖ until ―it gains legitimacy‖, since ―it is its entry into the arena
of public consideration‖ – with the social and political backing of state and society actors and their
institutions – ―that enables it to gain legitimacy‖ (Herbert Blumer, 298).
39
IV. PART FOUR
There are two Subjects/Actors in these discourses: the US state and the
GWRHM (as part of global civil society). Both actors works as ―interpellating
subjects‖ who establish relations of inclusion or exclusion with different types of
addressees, who are the ―interpellated subject.‖
The GWHRM, articulator of the ―Gender and Human Rights and Reproductive
Health Rights‖ discourse, sees itself as the organic expression of a collective will that
deliberates and exercises its right to self-expression and self-determination in the
international conferences organised by the UN. These are seen as a democratic space
where the international policy of the US state can be questioned and displaced. In this
sense, the GWHRM seeks to redirect population policy to achieve historic objectives
that are political, because they imply weakening the population control policy and its
Subject.
53
Following Landi (1992), I have analysed the semantic units (ideological elements) that appear most
frequently in the two discourses and proceeded to order them according to the semantic grouping in their
relationship of inclusion or opposition. Based on this relationship and grouping, I proceeded – following
Van Dijk – to formulate the basic proposition.
40
In the ―Population Control‖ discourse, there are ideological elements derived
from the ideologies and theories studied in PART THREE. Those that appear most
frequently are as follows: growth of the human species, population growth, population
explosion, poor regions, reproduction, fertility, fecundity, insecurity, fertility reduction
and control, contraceptive methods, abortion, sterilization (voluntary and involuntary),
substances, incentives, aid, limits, family size, family planning programmes, national
security, instability, insecurity, development, resources, minerals, industrial
development, food, water, experiments, degeneration, poverty, the poor, survival,
structural poverty, non-viability, sex, women, children, biological quality, population
groups, race, indigenous peoples, coercion, the fittest, nature, disease, mortality, births,
subsistence and decadence54.
In the ―Gender and Human Rights and Reproductive Rights‖ discourse, the
terms that appear most frequently are: rights, gender, women, reproduction, health,
health care, sex, childbirth, abortion, contraceptives, patriarchy, discrimination,
violence, children, decisions, self-determination, family, fertility, fecundity, services,
sexuality, the exercise of rights, self-determination, the body, discrimination, family
planning programmes, human and reproductive rights, hygiene, safety, decision55.
Diagram No. 1.
THE USA STATE GWHRM
54
Cf. Analytical Corpus in PART TWO. National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of
Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM200) 1974.
55
Cf. Analytical Corpus in PART TWO. Programme of Action of the International Conference on
Population and Development. Chapter VII, United Nations A/CONF.171/13, 18 October 1994:
―Women‘s Voices ‘94‖ A Declaration on Population Policies (1993: 637-640)
41
4.2.2. The dichotomization of reproduction and the actors
First, we need to identify what they have in common, which is that both actors
are the addressers of discourses. The dichotomization between actors and discourses
arises because both are constituted as Subjects of social and political action and relate
to each other through conflict. The difference lies in the fact that the GWHRM is the
expression of a power that arises from and originates in civil society to claim and
defend women‘s human rights and reproductive health rights; as a contestatory Subject,
it will play a leading role in the changes brought about in population and development
policy, by including the ―gender‖ approach in it. The US state, in contrast, is the
expression of state power, ―located over and above society,‖ which prioritises
economic and political interests (its own and those of powerful economic groups and
transnational capital) in its ―areas of commercial influence,‖ over and above human
development interests. As a subject it plays the leading role in the policy of fertility
control – with a patriarchal approach – which affects women‘s human rights and
reproductive health.
Diagram No. 2.
56
The semantic utterances in the basic propositions play a condensatory role with regard to others. It is
around these that the structural poles of the discourses take shape and function as hegemonic principles.
57
In this first semantic grouping, the ―inter-discursive difference‖ is examined by identifying which is
the ―common‖ semantic utterance in both discourses, and next by relating this to utterances that are ―not
common‖ or ―absent.‖ Due to their recurrence, these also function as symbolic in one of the discourses,
but do not appear or are banished in the other, thus giving a different meaning to the propositions.
58
Cf. Infra.
42
expand the analysis of reproduction to include new articulations with other semantic
units which likewise operate as symbolic. To do this, we will proceed to the in-depth
reading.
From the former reading, it has become clear that the ideological element and/or
semantic utterance that plays a key role in these discourses is ―reproduction,‖ and that
this takes on a different sense and meaning in each discourse, due to the way in which
it is articulated around broader semantic units such as those present in the basic
proposition. In the in-depth reading, we will proceed step by step to identify the new
articulations that take shape around reproduction and the propositions that emerge from
these articulations, with the aim of: a) deepening our understanding of their sense and
meaning in the discourses; and b) as a result of this analysis, arriving at the symbolic
proposition of all the rest, which will shape the fundamental contradiction; the
relationship between these articulations will lead us to the structural poles of the
discourses, based on which their hegemonic principles are expressed.
The cultural strategy is linked to this. It plays an important role because these
strategies operate by using ―persuasive‖ policies that go beyond ―family planning‖ in
the strict and coercive sense it is given by the language of ―population control,‖ as they
seeks to make ―people move in the direction we want for what they think are their own
reasons.‖ Proposals for achieving this include ensuring a minimum level of education
for women, indoctrinating young people and children (with regard to the desirability of
having smaller families), and ―to convince the masses [...] to have [...] only two
children. [...] the obvious increased focus of attention should be to change the attitudes
of the next generation‖. The strategy includes ―health festivals‖ and other cultural
activities such as music, which assist the ―free tube-tying and vasectomy campaigns‖.
43
―Reproduction‖ in these programmes is therefore determined more by
quantitative demographic indicators and less by the concept of human rights and
reproductive health, because they are based on a demographic assessment which took it
as given and proven that there is an inverse relationship between population growth and
economic growth. Based on this ―mistaken assumption‖ or ―universal truth,‖ depending
on the speaker‘s point of view, the population control policy established avowedly
restrictive and controlling demographic strategies and methods.
Diagram No. 3.
In the ―Gender and Human Rights and Reproductive Health Rights‖ discourse,
family planning is understood as the set of human rights-based practices aimed at
improving the health and reproductive rights of women (and men). Here the subject is
returned to the status of beneficiary of the policies. The starting point is the right of
individuals – especially women – to take decisions about reproduction, which implies
having access to contraceptive methods and being able to use them appropriately. This
comes about as a result of freedom and autonomy in decision-making and the
individual‘s self-determination with regard to their reproductive life without suffering
discrimination, coercion or violence, in line with what is stipulated in the international
documents approved at UN conferences.
44
In this discourse, ―reproduction‖ is thus disconnected from the objective of
―reducing family size‖ and its indicators. Instead, the priority is its link with the two
basic concepts (rights – individual and collective – and reproduction) which are at the
same time constitutive elements of the ―human rights and reproductive health rights‖
discourse. In this sense, it differs from the ―population control‖ discourse because it
breaks with the latter‘s focus on the ―population and development‖ dyad by believing
that human beings are the axis of development and that their reproductive rights, as
individual rights, cannot be exercised unless the social, economic and political
conditions are in place for them to be fulfilled. This link between the individual and the
social sphere locates the debate in the field of development and implies that the
possibility of exercising these rights also depends on improving the economic, political
and social conditions in which people live and which are at the same time factors that
determine their health, together with individual and collective behaviours and lifestyles.
Diagram No 4.
With regard to ―service provision,‖ the difference between the two discourses
likewise depends on their objective, strategy and methods, which are in turn linked to
their perception of the subject (people). If the discourse views people as beneficiaries
of the policy, its sense and meaning will be different and opposed to the discourse that
views people as the object of management – in other words, as subjects deprived of the
59
The concept of biopower used here draws on Negri, A. and Hard, M. (2000).
45
right to health and the right to exercise their fundamental human rights. In the case of
women, this perception consigns them ―ad eternam‖ and in perpetuity to the ―status of
an object‖ rather than a person.
The services are designed to control the bodies and thus the fertility and lives of
women and their offspring. Poverty is to be combated by killing the poor in their
mother‘s womb. It is clearly established that ―the aim is to eliminate the poor rather
than poverty.‖ With this in mind, direct support policies were implemented through
bilateral agreements between states, which in turn facilitated those that were
implemented indirectly through NGOs and private clinics.
The former type of policies, said to be part of the ―fight against poverty,‖ were
implemented through ―conditional aid.‖ The condition was to meet the indicators and
targets for the number of people who should be sterilized, by implementing ―Family
Planning Programmes.‖ This type of ―aid‖ in exchange for forced sterilization was
implemented aggressively in the 1960s and ‘70s, through the ―Alliance for Progress‖
(humanitarian food aid with the aim of sterilizing women) 60 and during the military
dictatorships in Latin America which carried out the ―Condor Plan.‖ 61 In the post-
―Washington Consensus‖62 period of the 1980s, now in more democratic contexts with
neoliberal governments, conditional aid continued under other arrangements and with
the backing of the ―Law on Sexual and Reproductive Rights.‖ This enabled family
planning programmes to be institutionalized in several countries which enacted in law
the resolutions and action plans approved in the Women‘s Conferences organised by
60
The ―Alliance for Progress‖ was a US economic and social assistance programme for Latin America
(1961-1970). It deployed aggressive strategies in the area of sterilization and ―supported the construction
of [...] hospitals, clinics and water-purification projects throughout Latin America.‖
http://www.america.gov/st/develop-english/2011/March/20110307144645nerual1.765078e-02.html
61
Through the Condor Plan, the United States CIA coordinated operations with the top echelons of the
military dictatorships in the Southern Cone of the Americas (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay,
Uruguay and Bolivia). It was carried out in the 1970s and ‘80s (Paredes 2004).
62
Based on the assumption that the welfare state is responsible for economic stagnation (the lost decade
of the ‘80s), the fiscal deficit and the inefficiency of public services, the Washington Consensus (Moreno
2004) promotes the shrinking of the state, untrammelled access for transnational capital and the
privatisation of public services. The objective (Ponte, 2005: 313) is to reduce the role of the state as the
guarantor of basic social rights by delegating its regulatory role to the ―free market‖ and making
individuals responsible for their ―capacity‖ to access health, education and social security services.
Therefore, social goods such as health, education and social security, formerly achieved as rights, began
to be questioned and gradually transformed into articles of merchandise. In the area of health, the reform
process adopted various arrangements to create a market with the expectation of investment and
profitability in cost-benefit terms. The reform of the organisation and management of health services also
took place by means of decentralisation, which would supposedly lead to more efficient management.
This reform targeted one of the key spaces of the health / disease / care process with the aim of
encouraging competition between health services and, indirectly, the involvement of financial capital in
the health market.
46
the UN. Some of these programmes were just as aggressive as in the past, as pointed
out in the report of the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defence of
Women‘s Rights (CLADEM: 2003, 2004).63
In the ―Gender and Human Rights‖ discourse, services are intrinsically linked to
a different perception of people as service users. In other words, people are given back
their right to decide and are seen as subjects with the capacity to fully exercise their
fundamental human rights, including rights linked to reproductive health. They
therefore cease to be seen as objects. This led to changes in the approach and
arrangements for service provision and government policies for direct support to
improve the conditions in health care services and revolutionise their practices, as they
redefined the health sector‘s obligations in primary health care to include a)
information, education and communication on human sexuality, reproductive health
and responsible paternity; b) information about and access to family planning methods
that are appropriate, safe, effective, affordable and accepted as a result of an informed
decision, c) safe pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal services and the elimination of
maternal health risks, which was the key demand with regard to women‘s health during the
International Decade for Women, 1975-1985, d) abortion prevention and treatment of the
consequences, e) prevention and appropriate treatment of infertility, f) prevention,
diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS,
and of breast cancer and other diseases of the reproductive organs, g) elimination of
harmful behaviours such as female genital mutilation, sexual violence and sex trafficking,
h) developing mechanisms for participation by the community, and especially women, at
all levels of the health care system, i) encouraging men to be responsible in all aspects of
sexual and reproductive health, civil society and the community in general, paying
particular attention to empowering women to defend reproductive rights (ICPD
Programme of Action, 1994, Chapter VII, Paragraphs 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, 7.9, 7.11).
Following this line of action, policy-makers and planners were given a (non-
binding) mandate and several countries implemented health system reforms that
changed administrative structures through decentralisation processes to improve the
quality of the service. Thus, service provision is directly related to the continuity of
care and improvements in quality.
Diagram No. 5.
63
In the 1990s in Peru, for example, the ―National Population Plan 1998-2002,‖ financed by USAID and
UNFPA, stated that ―birth control, sex education and the ‗gender perspective‘‖ should be linked. 320,000
women were sterilized in Peru during the Fujimori government with the backing of the ―Law on Sexual
and Reproductive Rights‖ (CLADEM 2003, 2004).
47
4.3.1.3. The structural poles of the discourses and how the main
Subjects/actors articulate these with the hegemonic principles
Diagram No.6.
Consequently, the hegemonic principles are the fundamental structural poles of the
discourses that contain the fundamental contradiction. This organises the social world
in dichotomous terms, because the actors and/or Subjects that are the addressers of the
discourses relate to each other through conflict, opposition and confrontation. Here,
through language, the discourses pose a dilemma which – in this research study – is
constituted and operates as historical and political, because it defines the resolution of
the conflict over ―population policy‖ in terms of power relations. This leads us to a
final consideration of the relationship between the structural poles of the discourses and
the main Subjects/actors who produce them.
64
This category, coined by Althusser (op. cit.), is related to that of the „functioning‟ of ideology.
Ideology ―interpellates‖ and constitutes individuals as subjects, and they in turn give the ideologies
material form through different practices that operate through ―apparatus‖ – various state and society
institutions and organisations – which Althusser calls ―ideological state apparatus‖ and Gramsci calls
―hegemonic apparatus.‖ This makes it possible to break with the instrumentalist view of power and
situate it instead in terms of ―power relations,‖ as well as breaking with ―topological‖ views of social
reality. Consequently, the ―individuals‖ who are interpellated and constituted as subjects act through
identity collectives, which may be ―movements,‖ ―governments,‖ ―parties‖ or ―pressure groups‖
(economic, religious, cultural, gender, age, ethnic, etc).
48
also refers to the Subject that they constitute through their interpellations: the
interpellated subject.
In the discursive dispute, the representatives of states are thus situated and
located around this dilemma: they either identify themselves with ―what is democratic‖
– i.e., the ―historic project‖ of an alternative population and development policy
formulated in the ―Women‘s Voices 94‖ Declaration on Population Policies – or they
identify themselves with the ―antidemocratic‖ policy of population control. Through
the ―interpellatory interplay,‖ the utterances thus seek to resolve the dilemma by
aligning the third subject either with the GWHRM or with the US state.
65
The CIA, the US Army, USAID and others analysed above in PART THREE.
66
In discourse, verisimilitude does not refer epistemologically to the ―truth‖ or ―falsity‖ of the utterances
but rather to the power effects produced by a discourse, which presents itself as a ―universal truth.‖
49
The effectiveness of the GWHRM lies in having articulated human rights and
reproductive health rights around ―what is democratic‖. This is what gives it legitimacy
in the dispute with its rival, because it situates and identifies the latter with ―what is
anti-democratic‖. It is around the sense and meaning of ―what is democratic‖ that the
alternative population policy is identified and expressed, and at the same time
interpellates and constitutes other subjects that operate to oppose population control.
Diagram No 7.
4.4. The ideological unity of the discourses and the discursive matrix
From the way in which the ideological elements or semantic utterances are
articulated around the hegemonic principles, the ideological unity of the discourses can
be defined and their discursive matrix can be elucidated.
In the two discourses that are the subject of this study, there is a dispute around
the ideological elements that play a condensatory role with regard to the others.
Although they belong to the same semantic field, such as ―reproduction,‖ ―family
planning,‖ ―services,‖ etc, they are grouped in the discourses in a relationship of
exclusion due to the way in which they are linked to the discourses‘ two ―hegemonic
principles,‖ which are ―Population Control‖ and ―Gender, human rights and
reproductive health.‖ According to Laclau (1986: 115), if this happens, ―we find
ourselves with a relatively unified discourse.‖ Likewise, the ideological matrix in the
two discourses is characterised by being binary and refers to an arena of conflict, power
relations and power effects produced by the social and political actors involved in the
conflict, whose discourses thus dichotomize social and political reality.
Of course, the process of social and political struggle may or may not lead to
changes in a certain ideological matrix. In the process analysed, it seems that what has
changed in the ―population and development‖ discourse is the internal organisation of
the ideological elements in the matrix over the period from 1961 to 1994. This
organisation is what gives sense and meaning to the central propositions in the
50
discourses produced from 1945 to 1974-1994 (Population Control) and from 1968 to
1994 (Gender and Human Rights and Reproductive Health Rights).67 This leads us to
analyse the effectiveness and power effects of the discourses and the discursive process
in order to better understand the polarity of a binary ideological matrix.
4.4.1. The power effects of the discourses and the interpellatory and
interpellated Subjects.
The power effects of the discourse of the US state are related to its addressees
and refer to different periods of time and contexts. To start with, its interpellations were
effective, because they constituted economic and political actors (politicians and
governments of other states) as subjects once they accepted and identified with
―population control.‖ This is because the US state‘s economic and commercial interests
in ―poor regions‖ of the world are the same as the interests of the groups with
transnational economic power, meaning that the latter not only supported but also
promoted this policy. They therefore constituted the principal pro-addressees, together
with the political leaders and governments of less developed countries who have an
affinity with US policy, who took measures to help to secure political and social
stability in their countries, ―combating poverty‖ by means of ―fertility reduction‖
strategies with the support and (conditional) aid provided by ―international
cooperation.‖ Consequently, an initial power effect of the US state discourse is the
potential and capacity that power confers upon it to implement its policy through
bilateral relations.
67
The propositions in binary opposition are expressed in different ways and with metagroups that once
again regroup the semantic fields and which allude to ―democratic‖ and ―antidemocratic‖ alternatives as
the dilemma: either the ―democratic‖ project triumphs, meaning that the ―alternative population policy‖
is approved and states vote to ―constitutionalize‖ human rights and reproductive health rights, so that the
policy can then be deployed by governments in their countries to benefit the people; or the
―antidemocratic‖ project prevails and the human species is controlled in various ways through the
―population control‖ policy, which serves the economic and political interests of hegemonic elites who
act through the state. Faced with this dilemma, the UN is called on to fulfil its mandate and resolve the
conflict in favour of the alternative project.
51
However, despite these efforts, the initial ―power effect‖ produced by the
discourse entered into crisis at the Bucharest Conference (1994), where the policy of
population control was called into question and delegitimised by various actors who
formed the ―historic oppositional block‖ referred to in PART THREE. Here, what
needs to be stressed with regard to ―power effects‖ is the loss of hegemonic capacity by
the dominant discourse, whose interpellations no longer produced constitutive effects
once the unity of the discourse had broken up. This enabled the ideological sphere to be
transformed as a result of the entry and intervention of alternative discourses, which
reorganised and disputed the ideological elements under a new form of articulation and
based on a different interpellation. These discourses were produced by the Group of 77,
and in this scenario the GWHRM constituted itself as an organised force and the
organic expression of the contestatory discourse.
Thus, by including the interpellations that referred to ―human rights and sexual
and reproductive health rights‖ in the ―population control‖ discourse, it sought to
rearticulate the discursive unity of its discourse without changing its hegemonic
principle. To structure this ―new unity,‖ it penetrated human rights institutions with
financial support from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations (Petras, 2001), and
promoted and organised – together with the power structures of the UN – the
International Conferences that took place during the ―UN Decade for Women‖ (1975-
1985). Thus, it seems to have decided to approach a new para-addressee: women.
Consequently, until the end of the 1980s and in a context in which a historic
meaningful event took place – the break-up of the socialist system and the defeat of the
counter-addressee, the main enemy identified with ―communism‖ – the US state seems
to have managed to rearticulate the ideological unity of its discourse by absorbing the
contestatory discourse‘s most symbolic ideological elements and implementing
programmes aimed at ―educating‖ women and ―indoctrinating‖ the masses.
What the US state did was therefore to rearticulate the ―real‖ policy of
―population control‖ – which was already being implemented – by including the most
symbolic ideological elements of the ―virtual‖ (unimplemented) policy of ―gender,
human rights and reproductive health.‖ In this way, the ―population control‖ discourse
included a new group of elements in its semantic field which enabled it to make new
discursive references to interpellate women as an ―identified group‖ in an inclusive
way, shifting them from being a ‗para-addressee‘, ignored due to its status as an
―object,‖ to becoming a pro-addressee. With this ―modus operandi‖, it sought to
achieve another effect: to break up the ―social unit‖ of women organically linked to the
GWRHM, in order to separate it as an identified group from its Subject; and thus
identify and position the GWHRM as a negative addressee (or adversary that had
brought together antiglobalisation movements, with which the population control
52
discourse continued to maintain a relationship of ―exclusion‖ because it identified them
as ‗radicals,‘ ‗terrorists,‘ ‗fundamentalists,‘ and other terms that function as substitutes
for ―communism‖).
Hence, with regard to the first manifestation of the crisis of hegemony, it can be
said by way of a partial conclusion that what the US state did – in order to rearticulate
its hegemony – was to move its discourse from the pole of its ―spirit‖ to the pole of its
―letter.‖ Following Faye 1974, the poles of a discourse can be represented as a
horseshoe: at one of its extremes is the ―spirit‖ of the discourse (Kratos/State,
Government) and at the other the ―letter‖ of the discourse (Demos/People). Thus, when
the US state rearticulated the most symbolic elements of the contestatory discourse in
its discourse on population control, it approached the pole of the ―letter‖ (at one
extreme of the horsehoe); and it distanced itself from this extreme of the horseshoe
when it turned back to the pole of the ―spirit‖. 68 Because of this, ―population control‖
can be thought of as an ideologeme.69
68
This shift also seems to be related to the two-party system and whether the US government was
controlled by Republicans or Democrats. This demonstrates indisputably that discourses interact with
political systems.
69
For Cross (1997), the ideologeme is a semiotic-ideological microsystem that is generated in discourse
and spreads or filters into various social discourses or discursive practices as a result of its frequent
recurrence. The relationship between the semiotic and the ideological is given by the fact that certain
outstanding semes can be recognised in the ideologeme and these in turn make it possible to detect a
certain ideology. The ideologeme condenses the dominant thought in a given society at a given moment
in time. It is therefore a signifier with ideological connotations.
70
On the concept of Empire, Cf. Negri, A. and Hardt, M. 2000.
53
reform.‖ Thus, the power effects are measured by ―the hegemonic capacity of a
discourse‖ and this is achieved by ―integrating interpellations that differ in scope and
nature – some classist, others non-classist (gender-based) – in a relatively structured
whole‖ (Ipola 1982: 103). The various interpellations produce power effects by
constituting (individuals as) subjects, leading to the articulation and constitution of a
―collective will‖ which becomes the Subject of change.
In a situation of conflict and power relations, the success of the speech-act also
requires the speaker to have an authoritative voice and to be invested with the authority
to speak, and for this it requires legitimacy (Ducrot, Op. Cit.). The authoritative voice is
therefore not a given but is constructed and deconstructed in keeping with its capacity
to produce power effects on recipients/addressees. The construction of this authority
requires the prior constitution of a interpellating subject (the GWHRM); and, as a result
of this, it requires effectiveness in the articulation/constitution of the interpellated
subject (the addressees). This produces a two-way relationship whereby the
authoritative voice is authorised and viceversa. The legitimacy thus constructed by the
GWHRM was put to the test at the Cairo Conference.
71
Also known as a ―constative utterance‖
72
Also known as a ―performative utterance‖
73
Although it is true that the mandates agreed at the UN are not binding, this does not reduce the
importance of the effectiveness of the speech-act as the contestatory discourse acquires material form.
54
The legitimacy achieved by the GWHRM also allows us to refer to the
discursive practice as ―the relationship of the speaker with what it says‖ because ―this
overlap (not only) confers authority and an authoritative voice‖ but also makes visible
other power effects related to the verisimilitude 74 and trustworthiness75 of this discourse
and its Subject, allowing it to introduce its most heartfelt demands in the Cairo
Programme of Action.
74
Verisimilitude refers to the representative dimension of language in its descriptive component, through
which it constructs reality ―just as it is.‖ This dimension produces verisimilitude.
75
Trustworthiness is linked to the speech-act and the intersubjective relationship between the addresser
and its addressees, based on the representation of reality.
55
whenever there are contradictions, the economic, social and political field will be
dichotomized.
Subjects, their discourses, and discursive practice in the field of ―population and
development policy,‖ the issue and object of which is ―territory, population and
resources,‖ will therefore continue to articulate/rearticulate and disarticulate ideological
elements in dispute around ―hegemonic principles‖ which, due to the nature of the gaps
mentioned above, will acquire new sense and meaning. There is evidence of this in the
events and new challenges posed by globalisation in the 21st century.
The political dimension is in itself one of the factors that determine health […] Today it
is showing its relevance because it conditions the distribution of social determining
factors themselves. Health is political because its own social determining factors are
vulnerable to political intervention and dependent on political action. In that sense,
ideology, power and politics influence people‘s health (Franco G. A and Álvarez D.A
2008: 282).
Therefore, based on the comparative analysis I have undertaken of the two discourses
on population policy, it can be stated that the political dimension, process and factors
play a decisive role in the definition and redefinition of any policy, whether on
population or some other issue. In this study, I have tried to show that politics itself
determines whether the gender focus, the exercise of fundamental human rights
(individual and collective), human and sustainable development, and consequently
health, are included in population policy.
56
V. PART FIVE
5. FINAL CONCLUSIONS
5.1. We have seen that, in discursive practice, the GWHRM and the US state
built relationships with their social conditions of existence and related to each other
through the conflict that took place in the process of social and political struggle and in
the space of the International Conferences organised by the UN. The conflict relations
have been examined through language, showing that the discourses are polarised,
because they identify and order the social and political world differently by means of
opposing hegemonic principles: ―Population Control‖ and ―Gender and Human Rights
and Reproductive Health Rights‖.
Consequently, the study has shown that, rather than being ―plucked out of the
air,‖ the two discourses can be understood as a form of social existence of social,
political and ideological struggles, and the power relations established during the
process of social discursive production, which refers to certain historical and social
conditions of production. Based on these, I have tracked the ―footprints‖ of the
respective discursive production processes, describing, in the field of their direct
production: a) the respective theories and ideological tendencies on which they were
based; b) the problems they sought to address and resolve; and c) the different
scenarios/spaces and apparatus through which their social and political practices were
organised and materialised in the quest for hegemony, thus revealing the conditions of
circulation and reception where the power effects of the discourses are produced.
In the case of the ―Population Control‖ discourse, the post-World War II context
was favourable to the US state, enabling it to articulate its political, economic and
military hegemony and position itself in the international arena to deploy population
control by means of coercion and consensus. Likewise, the context of the ―Cold War‖
meant that in its discursive practice it constructed ―enemy‖ adversaries and its relations
with them were antagonistic. The adversary operates and is identified in the discourse
with ―communism‖. The US state acted to prevent this adversary from interpellating –
ideologically and politically – the growing mass of dispossessed people in less
developed countries and exercising influence in these ―poor regions of the world‖
identified as areas of economic and political interest to the United States.
76
This policy – although articulated differently – was not new in the sense that it continued an
interpellatory trend in the field of ―population control‖ that began at the end of the 19th century and
carried on throughout the 20th. Depopulation and eugenics policies had already been developed by
organisations such as the International Family Planning Federation, which initially emerged as a
subcommittee of the Eugenics Society and represents the merger of the eugenics movement and the birth
control movement, whose relationship is based on a commitment to prevent ―the undesirables‖ from
57
By analysing this ―population policy‖ in concrete and historical terms, I have
tried to show and argue that the US state, in close connection with political and
economic power structures and their respective apparatus of hegemony, ―managed‖ the
reproduction of the population (life, death, reproduction). Far from being the ―ultimate
beneficiary‖ of a policy concerned with its welfare, the population instead became an
―instrument‖ used to achieve ―other‖ objectives, as defined and formulated in
―MEMORANDUM 200,‖ better known as the ―Kissinger Report‖. This policy entered
an organic crisis and lost hegemony due to the actions of the contestatory Subject.
The ―Gender and Human Rights and Reproductive Health Rights‖ discourse
was articulated in response to the former discourse in order to challenge it, in three
interlinked dimensions of sense and meaning:
Firstly, it was produced in the context of the Cold War, which had given rise to
a specific ―dominant‖ discursive formation favourable to ―population control.‖ The
capability of the GWRHM as a Subject, as well as the power effects of its discourse, is
rooted in its ability to de-structure this discursive formation, leading to the emergence
of another, based on the expression of ―other‖ interpellations. These enabled the
constitution and social and political action of (an)―other‖ Subject(s) which, by
interacting with reality, altered the political and ideological arena at the end of the 20 th
century, generating a new discursive formation and breaking up the ―hegemony of the
dominant discourse.‖ In other words, it produced a double power effect.
Thus, it is in this ―discursive dispute‖ that the discourse of ―Gender and Human
Rights and Reproductive Health‖ and its Subject gradually gained legitimacy, an
authoritative voice and authority, until finally, in the post-Cold War context, the
―unipolarity‖ and consequent neoliberal ―democratisation‖ that took place in a more
globalised context, shaping a new discursive formation, generated objective and
subjective conditions for a multiplicity of scattered discourses – as a result of the
multiplying. It currently represents and coordinates various national family planning organisations and it
is the largest international private agency in the field of population control by means of family planning.
To start with it received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and later from USAID and the World
Bank (Embid, A. 2000: 118-119).
77
The power relations that are established between the genders allow us to understand why it is possible
to violate a certain norm, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(United Nations 1966), which recognises ―the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest
attainable standard of physical and mental health‖ (Article 12, clause 1) and the human rights of specific
vulnerable groups (including women and children).
58
rupture of the previous discursive formation – to attempt to reorganise the ideological
field and dispute hegemony by rearticulating an alternative population policy. This was
defined by bringing together and mainstreaming the most heartfelt claims and demands
formulated by the GWHRM in the ―Women and Population Policies‖ Manifesto
(1992). As a demand that arose from organised civil society, it had the capacity to
enter78 the United Nations system, interpellate the member states in 1994, and bring
about the paradigm shift.
Having said this, it is important to refer to some other aspects of the ―dispute for
hegemony‖ that took place between the actors in the process analysed.
5.2. The dispute for hegemony between the two discourses has been
understood as the most openly political phase in the confrontation that took place in the
process of social and political struggle, involving the (unstable) power relations
established between the actors, and in the different scenarios in which significant
events in the production of meaning took place and significant discursive footprints
were registered.
With regard to the actors, the dispute was defined when the discourse of
―population control‖ lost its interpellatory and constitutive capacity and entered an
organic crisis that was expressed in the break-up of its ―hegemonic principle‖ and thus
the loss of its hegemony; while the counter-hegemonic discourse of ―Gender and
Human Rights‖ managed to impose itself in the social, political and ideological arena.
With regard to the confrontation settings, I have analysed and located the
dispute for hegemony in the spaces where the most relevant events in the production of
meaning took place and where the significant footprints of discursive production were
registered. These are, firstly, the International Population Conferences organised by the
United Nations that were held in Bucharest (1974) and Cairo (1994); and secondly the
International Human Rights Conferences held in Tehran (1968) and Vienna (1991), and
the ―UN Decade for Women‖ Conferences held in Mexico (1975) and Amsterdam
(1984). It was at these latter conferences that the unity of the interpellatory discourse
was rearticulated and its efficacy and power effects became capable of breaking up the
unity of its rival.
78
From the theories of ―Collective Action,‖ which have sufficient empirical evidence, we know that not
every demand can or has the capacity to ―enter‖ a certain system in order to be addressed. To achieve
this, it is necessary for the Subject/actor to be legitimate and to have reorganised power relations in such
a way as to ―checkmate‖ the system (Blumer, H. 1971: 298-306).
59
―New International Order‖ and ―Gender and Human Rights and Reproductive Health
Rights‖ in the population debate. These de-legitimised the ―Draft World Population
Plan of Action‖ (WPPA), which focused on limiting population growth by means of
reproduction indicators and direct policies to deal with fertility.
It is therefore possible to state that the social and political struggle is the
midwife of a process of discursive deconstruction and construction. Firstly, on the level
of deconstruction, the hegemonic principle of ―population control‖ is broken apart and
it enters a crisis of hegemony as the dominant discourse; secondly, there is a process of
discursive construction as the ―Gender and Human Rights‖ discourse is formulated and
then solidifies, gains strength and is ultimately enshrined in the United Nations, finally
winning the battle of the discourses in Cairo in 1994.
60
Considering the above, my study of population policies in the light of the
process of social and political struggle shows that decision-making deriving from
political power – in a globalised context – plays a decisive role in how public health is
viewed and addressed. To paraphrase the Pan American Health Organisation, public
health depends to a great extent on politics and the actors involved in it (PAHO, 2002).
By studying the policies that affect health (such as population control) and their
consequences, as well as the policies that promote and define it through the Cairo
―Programme of Action‖ (1994), it is possible to illustrate the relations of influence that
exist between the political factor, health and public health.
The political process and debate in the area of ―population and development
policy‖ thus promoted actions in favour of public health and fed back in an
intersectoral and interdisciplinary way into public health policies on gender inequality,
human rights violations and sexual and reproductive health, bringing various state and
society actors and sectors and different disciplines together to implement the Cairo
Programme of Action (Lori S. Ashford: 2001).
5.4. Another aspect that should be stressed is that by studying the ideological
elements involved in the concepts of ―demography‖ and ―health‖ and their relationship
with the determining factor of politics in an integrated way, it is possible to identify the
definition and implementation of a population policy that questions the power that is
established ―over and above society‖ and highlight the importance of the powers
emerging from civil society that lead to a new re-articulation (in a new way) of the
principles of fundamental human rights, economic, social and cultural rights, and
participation in the development of public policies (MARKS: 2000) that gives new
meaning to public health (and transforms it).
61
5.5. The comparative analysis of the discourses also allows us to state that
people‘s health, particularly the health of the most vulnerable groups, is affected by
policies outside the arena of health, or policies that go beyond the sphere of health and
are the result of the decisions taken by institutions with political power. Implementation
of the ―population control‖ policy was based on the exercise of such power; conversely,
the counter-hegemonic action which changed that policy drew its power from society
through collective action, determined some of the key guidelines in population and
health policy from the ―ideological and political arena,‖ and consequently affected the
health system.
The approach to the problems of population and health policy therefore situates
the sphere of politics as a determining factor in health. Its articulation poses the
challenge of addressing and resolving health problems on the political agenda, and
achieving the development of public policies aimed at improving people‘s health
conditions which, based on human rights and by means of mechanisms for the
construction of citizenship and political participation, go beyond actions that seek to
prevent the infringement of such rights in health systems (Mann JM et al 1994).
5.6. Bearing in mind that the modern concept of public health focuses more
on the factors that determine health, my study illustrates that the determining factor of
politics and the ―population policy‖ that was consequently defined on the basis of
political decisions played a significant role over and above other determining factors.
The population control policy affected women‘s physical, psychological and sexual
health and violated their rights. In its turn, the alternative policy which focused on a
new approach to ―population and development‖ brought about an improvement in
health conditions for women. Even so, women – especially in less developed countries
– are still victims of the inequities and inequalities inherent in the gender relations
defined by power relations, and this is aggravated by the conditions of economic,
social, cultural and institutional development that are important determinants of health.
If public policy is defined as ―the broad framework of ideas and values within
which decisions are taken and action, or inaction, is pursued by governments in relation
to some issue or problem‖ (O Neill and Pederson, 1992 cited by Fiona Adhead and
Allison Thorpe 2009: 11), it can be affirmed that although the policy defined in Cairo –
described as a set of guiding principles to be followed by states – is not binding and
thus does not guarantee that action will be taken, it is clear that the change in the
discursive formation has helped public health policies in various countries. This is
indicated in studies by researchers which show the significant progress that has been
made in the sphere of human and reproductive rights, although significant differences
still exist in less developed countries, in line with the points made in the previous
paragraph.
62
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