BOOK REVIEW
Asoka Bandarage, Women, Population and Global Crisis. London & New Jersey: Zed Books, 1997.

This is a well written, thoughtful, well researched and timely book which brings together a wealth of information documenting the connections between economic globalization, increasing economic and reproductive oppression of women, ecological deterioration, world wide decline in the standard of living of working people, and the uses of Malthusian and neo-Malthusian ideologies to mask the capitalist roots of the crisis. It is, however, a contradictory book, one which trendy middle class activists in the U.S. and elsewhere are likely to welcome, for it captures their main cherished concerns with self-change and spirituality based on a synthesis among intellectual and religious indigenous and nonWestern sources. Left activists and Marxist social scientists, on the other hand, will most likely find it descriptively useful but theoretically problematic and politically frustrating.

The book's strengths are the thorough documentation of the deepening global crisis in its manifold aspects and devastating social and ecological effects (especially on women and children), and the development of a feminist perspective on the nature of reproductive freedom useful to counteract present views which subsume women's rights under population control objectives. The book's weaknesses stem from the idealist nature of the analysis and the solution the author proposes. The author states, at the outset, that the world needs a "paradigm shift," meaning a process of psycho-social transformation leading from the current "dominator paradigm," characterized by violence, ecocrisis and inequality, to the "partnership paradigm," characterized by ecology, peace and justice (p. 3). While peace, justice and ecological survival are goals everyone in the left -- regardless of differences in political and theoretical commitments -- would support, disagreements about the ways to attain them are unavoidable and it is in this respect that the book is likely to find a mixed reception.

The first part is dedicated to a critical exposition of Malthus' theory and current Malthusian and neo-Malthusian analyses of the demographic causes of poverty, environmental degradation, political instability and the status of women, and a thorough examination of the political underpinnings of population control policies. Bandarage demolishes the Malthusian arguments that rely on overpopulation to explain any and all social problems -- whether at the local, national or global levels of analyses -- and postulate population control, the so-called "contraceptive revolution," as their only effective and "scientific" solution. Her analysis of Neo-Malthusian support for women's reproductive choices uncovers its coercive kernel; i.e. the reduction of women's rights to reproductive rights subsumed under the objectives of population control policies designed to curb the fertility of the poor. Her critique of the Malthusian ideology that posits population control as the only effective road to social justice and economic development is the foundation for the critique of the oppressive nature of fertility control in the absence of concomitant economic, political and social changes conducive to empowering women not only as reproductive agents but as political and economic agents on their own right. Her analysis illuminates the conservative implications of policies that consider family planning a sufficient precondition for improvements in the status of women and uncovers the convergence between liberal feminists and right wing supporters of population control made possible by the appeal of campaigns designed to expand women's "reproductive rights" in isolation from and as substitute to qualitative economic and political change. Her discussion of the various methods of fertility control pushed by private, state and international agencies under the guise of broadening women's reproductive choices and rights highlights the extent to which women, especially Third World women, have been subject to sterilization abuse, experimentation, anti-fertility "vaccines," and a variety of methods designed simply to reduce their fertility or produce permanent sterilization without substantial improvements in their lives. Under such conditions, family planning becomes a means of oppression, for it deprives the poor from bearing the children who might care for them in their old age and whose labor might increase the standard of living of their families.

To the Malthusian ahistorical emphasis on population (i.e., its rate of growth, size, density, structure, distribution, etc.) as the independent variable in any and all explanations of social, economic and political problems, Bandarage opposes, in the second part of the book, a political-economic analysis that takes as its starting point Marx's view about the need to examine population historically, because each mode of production has its own laws of population. Consequently, she argues, today's problems, have to be understood as effects of uneven global capitalist development, not as a result of "natural laws of population."

Developing the demographic implications of Marx's discussion of the effects of capital accumulation upon the demand for labor resulting in the inevitable production of a reserve army of labor (Marx, 1974: 612-648), years ago I constructed a Marxist theoretical framework for analyzing the effects of capital accumulation and capitalist contradictions on changes in population structures and processes (Gimenez, 1977). It was, therefore, very interesting to me to see Bandarage's thorough research which documents many of the relationships between capitalism and population postulated in that work. Demography and population studies are relatively undeveloped in Marxist and neo-Marxist writings; this is why Bandarage's book is a welcome contribution to this important area of theoretical and political work. Her chapters on the political economy of poverty, the environment, violence and on the social structural determinants of fertility place these phenomena firmly within the context of capitalist relations of exploitation and profit maximization. But, Bandarage points out, capitalism is not the only determinant of these phenomena: warning against "Marxist fundamentalism" and "class reductionisms," Bandarage insists one should look at other causes of current world problems such as patriarchy or male dominance, greed and thirst for power, racism, imperialism, and the heritage of the Western philosophical and intellectual traditions characterized by linear, fragmented and undialectical thinking, individualism and a competitive ethics.

Despite her assertions about the importance of historicity and political economy and rejection of ahistorical Malthusianism, theoretically, Bandarage's analysis does not rest on political economy but on ahistorical and idealist foundations. Political economy becomes a source of intervening socio-economic and political variables (e.g., capitalist accumulation, imperialism, globalization, transnational corporate power, etc.); the explanatory weight of the analysis shifts to ideological, psychological and ultimately ahistorical factors such as inherent male greed and desire for domination over women, nature and other men. Hence the solutions she proposes in the last chapter, in which she puts forth the idea that we are currently operating within a "dominator paradigm" characterized by ignorance, hatred, greed, anthropocentrism, patriarchy, capitalism, poverty, environmental destruction, etc. Instead, she argues, we should be engaging in a process of psychosocial transformation, of individual self-change (for we cannot change others, p. 317) towards eventually establishing a "partnership paradigm." This paradigm is characterized as a synthesis of a variety of intellectual and spiritual traditions such as Buddhism, Native American and other indigenous teachings, deep ecology, quantum theory, ecofeminism, social justice, evolutionary biology, bioregionalism, and so on (p. 316). Underlying these antithetical paradigms is the eco-feminist distinction between the "female" (i.e., nurturing, caring, peaceful) and the "male" (i.e., aggressive, war prone, dominant) principles. This kind of men vs. women and nature problematic ultimately exonerates the dominant classes and minimizes the relevance of class divisions within the male and female population.

The "partnership" paradigm is an abstract or undialectical negation of the psychological, cultural, social, economic, political and intellectual effects of capitalism. It results, at the individual level of analysis, in an ethics of selftransformation that reflects the concerns of many of the so-called "new social movements" in the advanced capitalist countries and is likely to be very appealing to middle- and upper-middle-class, single issue activists who, while involved in localized struggles around feminist, ecological, environmental, animal rights, rainforests, ecotourism and other issues, have indeed begun to voice their rationale for these struggles in frameworks or "discourses" which combine in various ways elements taken from Native American and non-Western religious and philosophical traditions. At the macro level of analysis, the alternative is an idealistic dialectics that transcends the dualisms inherent in the capitalist world view and form of socio-economic and political organization by postulating the "inherent connectedness" between subject/object, human/non-human, North/South, capital/labor, nature/culture, etc (p. 317). From a Marxist standpoint, underlying these connections there are material relations (i.e., not purely intersubjective relations, but relations mediated by people's relationship to the means of production) of domination and exploitation which cannot be transcended simply through processes of individual change. Bandarage's analysis rests upon methodological individualism, for it assumes that qualitative structural change would be the eventual outcome of changes in individuals' consciousness and behavior, from leading a selfcentered, consumption oriented style of life towards simplicity, shared consumption of consumer durables, and awareness of oneness with others and the earth. Such changes "..would take away a great deal of the ecological and social pressures that are generally attributed to population growth by the Malthusians" (p. 330). But, in the absence of structural changes in the mode of production, drastically lower levels of consumption among the enlightened middle strata can barely make a dent in the health of the capitalist system; instead, those espousing "voluntary simplicity," "spirituality," "cohousing," "recycling," alternative forms of home construction and so on have become a lucrative market for books, good and services produced through capitalist relations while contributing to strengthen their beliefs in the possibility of change through individual transformation; after all, they are experiencing it themselves in their alternative communities.

There is a contradiction between an analysis that, despite caveats, stresses the role of historical modes of production and capitalism, in particular, in determining poverty, the oppression of women, environmental deterioration and violence and a conclusion that, setting aside these material conditions, argues that what the world needs is

      "... primarily a shift of the human heart; from ignorance...
     greed... and hatred... towards wisdom..., generosity
     ... and compassion. It is only with wisdom and strong
     commitment on he part of more and more people to the basic
     values of compassion and generosity that the exploitation and
     domination of the present world order can be transcended and
     ecocentric, feminist, multicultural and socialist alternatives
     can be created. Solutions to the global crisis, including the
     population question, must be located within such a profound
     transformation in our consciousness and relationships - a
     psycho-social revolution" (p. 320).

But changes in consciousness and relationships presuppose changes in material conditions; there is a connection between the social and the psychological revolutions which needs to be explored. Such a study would most likely bring up, as an object for critical examination, the "elective affinity," to borrow Max Weber's expression, between the values characterizing the "partnership paradigm" and the material conditions within which their adherents in the advanced capitalist countries, generally college educated and relatively affluent, live. I am also skeptical of analyses that reproduce the distinction between women as good, moral, spiritual, sacred, the Goddess, the depositary of virtue, and men as the warriors, greedy, violent, dominant, the patriarchs which have oppressed women and nature throughout history. Men, like women, are social creatures and we do them both a disservice by reifying and imputing explanatory power to the socio-psychological effects of centuries old gender inequality and division of labor. The world will be a better place when the material conditions that resulted in their current traits are changed; from a Marxist theoretical standpoint, processes of individual self-transformation are not sufficient. Will a new culture ensuring planetary survival develop through the "incorporation of the sacred dimension of the feminine through the development of new archetypes and cultural myths" (p. 340), or through efforts to change the organization of production and the articulation between production and reproduction, so that the entire community assumes responsibility for the young, the elderly and the weak? This and other similar questions come to mind when reading the last chapter of this book and this is why it is, in the end, a contradictory though fascinating work. Those who teach courses in population studies will find the first seven chapters extremely useful for they contain a well informed critical assessment of Malthusianism in all its aspects. They might, however, and depending on their theoretical orientation, find the last chapter interesting but ultimately disappointing. Others might find in the last chapter, with its prescriptive statements about the changes that need to be made at all levels of the social organization and, above all, in one's personal life, the best and most comprehensive statement about what the New Age, and spirituality movement is all about. Perhaps what we need, as the new millennium starts, is a vision of what the future might be like and the kinds of modes of being that would be necessary to strive for if we are to build a humane form of social organization; knowledge of the needed structural changes is not sufficient. Books like this might help establish a productive dialogue among people who share similar goals despite their theoretical and political differences and this is why, despite my previous criticisms, I welcome it as an important addition to the progressive literature on population and as a source of very important thought provoking insights. References
Gimenez, Martha E. 1977. "Population and Capitalism." Latin American Perspectives, Vol. IV, No. 4 (Fall): 5-40. Marx, Karl. 1974. Capital, Vol.I. New York: International Publishers.