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Overpopulation Or Over Population? View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by D-Scholarship@Pitt OVERPOPULATION OR OVER POPULATION? A BURKEAN ANALYSIS OF TRANSFORMATIONS AND CONTINUITIES IN THE RHETORIC OF “HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH” AT THE UNITED NATIONS (1974-2004) by Matthew Paul Brigham Bachelor of Arts (BA), Baylor University, 2003 Master's Degree (MA), Baylor University, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2012 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Matthew Paul Brigham It was defended on April 16, 2012 and approved by John Lyne, Professor, Department of Communication Lara Putnam, Associate Professor, Department of History Barbara Warnick, Professor, Department of Communication Dissertation Advisor: Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor, Department of Communication ii Copyright © by Matthew Paul Brigham 2012 iii OVERPOPULATION OR OVER POPULATION? A BURKEAN ANALYSIS OF TRANSFORMATIONS AND CONTINUITIES IN THE RHETORIC OF “HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH” AT THE UNITED NATIONS (1974-2004) Matthew Paul Brigham, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2012 Despite the prominence of the issue across time, scholarly accounts of population rhetoric remain limited. Those analyses that do respond to this current of public argument focus overwhelmingly on actors such as Paul Ehrlich and R. Thomas Malthus, and on extreme instantiations of population rhetoric and policy, such as eugenics and China’s one-child policy. Missing in this body of scholarship is a sustained treatment of population rhetoric on a global stage, as it has occurred at United Nations conferences for over 30 years. This under-appreciated body of texts yields a global vision of population. Beyond the reductionist approaches to population that draw scorn from scholars, activists, and policymakers alike, the consensus documents produced at Bucharest (1974), Mexico City (1984), Cairo (1994), and the follow-ups to Cairo (1999 and 2004) take into consideration the complex web of factors that feed into population and that are fed by population. By employing a model of rhetorical criticism that focuses on a “close reading” of the final consensus documents produced by each conference, this study charts both the transformations of public argument across time while also paying special attention to the continuities in these texts. This project aims to benefit multiple scholarly communities, including environmental studies, international relations, public argument, and rhetorical theory and criticism, as well as to policymakers, NGOs, and activists focused on population issues. I consider whether it is meaningful to continue to talk about “population” as an issue separate from a web of interconnected factors, and whether we are in fact beyond discussions of iv overpopulation to the point where we have moved past and are thus over population. Alongside this topical question, this project opens the conversation as to whether UN conference documents, and related documents, constitute a unique rhetorical genre, and if so, what some characteristics of this genre might be. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................................................. XIII 1.0 POPULATION AS PUBLIC ARGUMENT .............................................................. 1 1.1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 2 1.2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................... 5 1.2.1 Population as a Policy Issue ............................................................................ 5 1.2.2 Argument, Rhetoric, and International Relations ...................................... 18 1.3 ARTIFACTS/OBJECTS OF STUDY .............................................................. 30 1.4 RHETORICAL CRITICISM AS MODE OF INVESTIGATION AND WORLDVIEW ................................................................................................................... 35 1.4.1 The Art of Rhetorical Criticism ................................................................... 35 1.4.2 Approaching Artifacts Through “Close Reading” ..................................... 38 1.4.3 Dialectical Approach to Rhetoric in Time ................................................... 42 1.4.4 Cluster-Agon Analysis ................................................................................... 46 1.5 CHAPTER ORGANIZATION AND PREVIEW ........................................... 50 1.5.1 Chapter Two: The Craft of Cairo ................................................................ 51 1.5.2 Chapter Three: The Early Years: Foil or Precursor? ............................... 54 1.5.3 Chapter Four: Reaffirmation or Reconfiguration? ................................... 55 1.5.4 Chapter Five: Conclusion ............................................................................. 55 vi 1.6 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 56 2.0 THE CRAFT OF CAIRO .......................................................................................... 58 2.1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 58 2.2 CAIRO: SETTING THE SCENE .................................................................... 60 2.3 THE PROGRAMME OF ACTION (1994) ..................................................... 63 2.3.1 Navigating the Text ....................................................................................... 63 2.3.1.1 Structure of the Text ........................................................................... 63 2.3.1.2 Crafting a Point of View ..................................................................... 65 2.3.2 Rhetorical Analysis ........................................................................................ 68 2.3.2.1 Negotiating the Development-Demographics Dialectic ................... 70 2.3.2.2 Conceptual Entailments of Calls for “Communication” ................. 82 2.3.2.3 Negotiating the Rhetorical Quandary ............................................... 87 2.3.2.4 The Universal-Particular Dialectic .................................................... 96 2.3.2.5 Participatory Population Politics ....................................................... 98 2.3.2.6 Assessing Cairo’s Kairos ................................................................... 100 2.3.2.7 Searching for a ‘Residual Message’ ................................................ 105 2.4 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 109 3.0 THE EARLY YEARS: FOIL OR PRECURSOR? ............................................... 111 3.1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 111 3.2 THE WORLD POPULATION CONFERENCE (BUCHAREST, 1974) ... 112 3.3 THE WORLD POPULATION PLAN OF ACTION (1974) ........................ 115 3.3.1 Key Features of the Text ............................................................................. 115 3.3.2 Rhetorical Analysis ...................................................................................... 118 vii 3.3.2.1 Putting the Development Horse Before the Demographic Cart ... 121 3.3.2.2 Blame-Shifting ................................................................................... 128 3.3.2.3 Securing Sovereignty ........................................................................ 130 3.3.3 Rhetoric: Missing in Action? ...................................................................... 133 3.3.4 Transitioning from Bucharest to Mexico City .......................................... 140 3.4 THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON POPULATION (MEXICO CITY, 1984) ....................................................................................................................... 141 3.5 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE FURTHER IMPLEMENTATION OF THE WORLD POPULATION PLAN OF ACTION (1984) ........................................ 145 3.5.1 Positioning Itself in Relation to the WPPA ............................................... 145 3.5.2 Key Features of the Text ............................................................................. 147 3.5.3 Rhetorical Analysis ...................................................................................... 148 3.5.3.1 Recalibrating Key Dialectics ............................................................ 149 3.5.3.2 Expanding the Round Table ............................................................ 153 3.5.3.3 Previewing the Puzzle ....................................................................... 156 3.5.3.4 Carving Space for Communication and Deliberation ................... 162 3.5.4 Re-Reading Mexico City ............................................................................. 166 3.6 CONCLUSION: READING BUCHAREST AND MEXICO CITY TOGETHER, AND LOOKING AHEAD ....................................................................... 167 4.0 REAFFIRMATION OR RECONFIGURATION? ............................................... 170 4.1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 170 4.2 ICPD+5 (UN, 1999) .........................................................................................
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