7.30 pm – Online – Language: English (mit deutscher Simultanübersetzung)
“How many more people can the earth take?” was and is a rhetorical question that has burned itself into the environmental consciousness over the past decades. Coupled with the steep growth curve of the world’s population and mass images from India, China or Nigeria, the horror scenario is complete: the earth is overpopulated! This rhetoric has a long, misanthropic tradition. From Malthus to the eugenicists of the 19th century, from forced sterilization to the eco-terrorism in Christchurch and El Paso.
Peter Staudenmaier is a historian at Marquette University in Michigan. He researches fascism in Germany and Italy, as well as the history of the environmental movement.
literature recommendation from Peter Staudenmaier:
Diana Ojeda, Jade Sasser, and Elizabeth Lunstrum, “Malthus’s Specter and the Anthropocene: Towards a Feminist Political Ecology of Climate Change” Gender, Place & Culture 27 (2020), 316-32
Jordan Dyett and Cassidy Thomas, “Overpopulation Discourse: Patriarchy, Racism, and the Specter of Ecofascism” Perspectives on Global Development & Technology 18 (2019), 205-24
Alex Amend, “First as Tragedy, Then as Fascism: Ecologist Garrett Hardin’s enduring gift to the nativist right” The Baffler September 26, 2019
Sebastian Normandin and Sean Valles, “How a network of conservationists and population control activists created the contemporary US anti-immigration movement” Endeavour 39 (2015), 95-105
Jedediah Purdy, “Environmentalism’s Racist History” New Yorker August 13, 2015
Jade Sasser, “From Darkness into Light: Race, Population, and Environmental Advocacy” Antipode 46 (2014), 1240-57
Garland Allen, “‘Culling the Herd’: Eugenics and the Conservation Movement in the United States, 1900–1940” Journal of the History of Biology 46 (2013), 31-72
No One Is Illegal, “Too many of whom, and too much of what?” Anarchist Library 2010
Priscilla Huang, “10 Reasons to Rethink the Immigration-Overpopulation Connection” Population and Development Institute 2009
David Satterthwaite, “The implications of population growth and urbanization for climate change” Environment & Urbanization 21 (2009), 545-67
Nathan Sayre, “The Genesis, History, and Limits of Carrying Capacity” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98 (2008), 120-34
Adam Rome, “Nature Wars, Culture Wars: Immigration and Environmental Reform in the Progressive Era” Environmental History 13 (2008), 432-53
Rajani Bhatia, “Greening the Swastika: Nativism and Anti-Semitism in the Population and Environment Debate” in Jael Silliman and Anannya Bhattacharjee, eds., Policing the National Body: Race, Gender, and Criminalization (South End Press 2002), 291-321
Emanuel Sferios, “Population, Immigration, and the Environment: Eco-fascism and the environmental movement” Z Magazine June 1998, 24-29
Sonia Shah, The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move (Bloomsbury 2020)
Jade Sasser, On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change (New York University Press 2018)
Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway, eds., Making Kin Not Population (Prickly Paradigm 2018)
Alison Bashford, Global Population: History, Geopolitics, and Life on Earth (Columbia University Press 2016)
Betsy Hartmann, Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control (Haymarket 2016)
Miles Powell, Vanishing America: Species Extinction, Racial Peril, and the Origins of Conservation (Harvard University Press 2016)
John Hultgren, Border Walls Gone Green: Nature and Anti-Immigrant Politics in America (University of Minnesota Press 2015)
Thomas Robertson, The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism (Rutgers 2012)
Ian Angus and Simon Butler, Too Many People: Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis (Haymarket 2011)
Sun-Hee Park and David Naguib Pellow, The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden (New York University Press 2011)
Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Harvard University Press 2008)
Björn Linnér, The Return of Malthus: Environmentalism and Post-War Population-Resource Crisis (Cambridge University Press 2003)
Jael Silliman and Ynestra King, eds., Dangerous Intersections: Feminist Perspectives on Population, Environment, and Development (South End Press 1999)
Eric Ross, The Malthus Factor: Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist Development (Zed 1998)
Lukas Nicolaisen, ed., Rechtsextreme Ideologien im Natur- und Umweltschutz (Naturfreunde 2018)
Peter Bierl, Grüne Braune: Umwelt-, Tier- und Heimatschutz von rechts (Unrast 2014)
Annett Schulze and Thorsten Schäfer, eds., Zur Re-Biologisierung der Gesellschaft: Menschenfeindliche Konstruktionen im Ökologischen und im Sozialen (Alibri 2012)
Anke Oxenfarth, ed., Ökologie von rechts (Oekom 2012)
Sabine Höhler, “Die Wissenschaft von der ‘Überbevölkerung’: Paul Ehrlichs ‘Bevölkerungsbombe’ als Fanal für die 1970er-Jahre” Zeithistorische Forschungen 3 (2006), 460-64
Jutta Ditfurth, Feuer in die Herzen: Plädoyer für eine ökologische linke Opposition (Konkret 1997)
Susanne Heim and Ulrike Schatz, Berechnung und Beschwörung: Überbevölkerung – Kritik einer Debatte (Schwarze Risse 1996)
Oliver Geden, Rechte Ökologie: Umweltschutz zwischen Emanzipation und Faschismus (Elefanten 1996)