Form Of Population Control Research Articles

Infrastructure as biopolitics: Fencing, categorizing and valuing animals for wolf conservation in Germany

This paper takes a critical look at biopolitical practices under the current regime for wolf conservation in Germany. One profound difference between human and more-than-human biopolitics is that it concerns multiple, more-than-human bodies, demanding a close examination of governance practices aimed at enabling conservation. My core argument is twofold: first, I argue that conservation policies in Germany attempt to frame wolves as collectivities and apply a population perspective on these animals. However, the very technologies that aim to monitor wolves as population, namely genetic analyses, also produce individual wolves that complicate conservation efforts due to their affective force (Lorimer, 2015). Second, as active wolf management in the form of population control is rare due to legal regulations, there is a strong focus on livestock protection measures. These infrastructuring practices (Barua, 2021) continue to fail because they rest on the idea that convivial coexistence can be quantified and ignore that technologies such as fences can alter animals’ atmospheres (Lorimer et al., 2019) profoundly. As a result, infrastructuring practices aimed at enabling coexistence may run counter to their initial purpose. With fences becoming habitats, lively and discursive multispecies relations are renegotiated.

HPV vaccination acceptance and perceptions related to fertility and population control in the Gambia: An anthropological analysis.

This qualitative study using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions is the first to investigate HPV vaccination in The Gambia; it provides an in-depth analysis of uptake, knowledge, and perceptions of HPV vaccination as well as trust in Ministry of Health vaccination advice. Despite high uptake rates, knowledge of HPV vaccination was low, and the most prominent concern was that the vaccine could cause infertility or is a form of population control. Holistic approaches to addressing HPV vaccine concerns relating to fertility that consider socio-political contexts, including colonial histories, could lead to more positive vaccine perceptions, empowered decisions and to increasing vaccine uptake rates in The Gambia and elsewhere.

British Environmental Orientalism and the Palestinian Goat,1917–1948

British colonial understanding of arid Mediterranean environments was characterised by the idea of degradation: these environments were seen as an aberration from the ‘norm’ of the lush and fertile British forests and grasslands. The struggle against desertification was central to British efforts to model the people and environments of their colonies according to their own ideals. The goat played an important role in the British understanding of arid landscapes as degraded, desertified and generally ‘lacking’, as it became the ultimate symbol for destruction. Nomadic goat-herding, a practice with hundreds of years of history, was singled out as the most destructive form of land use. Connected to the negative image of the goat was the stereotypical image of its owner: nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyles were deemed not only unproductive but outright reckless. Sedentarisation of the nomad was one of the main goals of British colonisers as a form of population control and maintenance of colonial power. This article examines the British colonial belief in Ruined Landscape Theory as applied to arid Mediterranean environments and tries to uncover the goat’s role in British environmental orientalism, focusing on Palestine during the British Mandate period, ca. 1917-1948.

Esclarecimento da população de Dourados MS sobre o uso indiscriminado de anticoncepcionais como agente causador de hiperplasia mamária

A densidade populacional de cães e gatos aumenta exponencialmente a cada ano e a adoção de métodos de interrupção do ciclo reprodutivo têm sido descritos para o controle desta, sendo a forma amplamente utilizada a farmacológica consistindo na aplicação de anticoncepcionais veterinários de efetiva ação, porém com efeitos adversos. Sendo assim o objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o grau de esclarecimento da população de Dourados-MS sobre a posse responsável de cães e gatos no que diz respeito às formas de controle reprodutivo bem como o conhecimento das possíveis patologias decorrentes da utilização de fármacos anticoncepcionais. Para tanto, foi aplicado questionário contendo questões relacionadas à temática, cujo preenchimento ocorreu de maneira manual ou eletrônica por 200 entrevistados escolhidos aleatoriamente. Verificou-se que a população que compôs a pesquisa consistia de indivíduos com instrução acadêmica (74% possuíam nível superior) e elevado poder aquisitivo (33% com renda familiar superior a 3 salários mínimos) que alegaram conhecer os riscos da administração de fármacos anticoncepcionais (88,5%) porém que ainda fazem uso deste método (14%) como forma de controle populacional possibilitando a ocorrência de alterações reprodutivas em seus animais (19,9%). Sendo assim é necessário maior esclarecimento da população sobre o bem-estar animal já que se verificou que o fator financeiro não consistiu em um parâmetro que determinasse a não adoção de métodos cirúrgicos de esterilização.

Suspect sexualities: contextualizing rumours of homosexuality within colonial histories of population control

This article examines the widespread notion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ in relation to a historical contextual factor that has been widely neglected within efforts to situate and make sense of this widespread notion: the legacy of western population control interventions in Africa and the anxieties, fears and suspicions that they have provoked. The article discusses the relevance of population control history within efforts to understand emerging forms of intolerance towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ+) people across the continent. Western population control interventions initiated after the official demise of colonial governments have provided a historical basis for suspicions and rumours about how the West continues to manipulate and control African communities despite the formal termination of colonial rule. While positivist western epistemic frameworks have largely constructed such suspicions as ‘irrational’ and as barriers to its development agendas, critical approaches have argued that they can provide critical insights into social imaginaries, particularly in relation to dynamics of power and inequality. In interrogating the suspicion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ from a critical perspective, analysis considers the rise of the international population movement and history of population control agendas in African countries in order to open up new ways of understanding the historical contextual factors that have engendered rumours that homosexualiy is a western imposition. Discussion specifically considers rumours and suspicions that homosexuality is a form of population control which have been iterated by African thought and political leaders. The article also relates these discourses to the increasing influence of the US pro-family movement in African sexual politics. Analysis draws on discursive data that was collected through online ethnography and fieldwork as well as a critical review of literature examining population control agendas and rumours in Africa. This article concludes that the history of the international population control movement is directly implicated within contemporary stigma and scapegoating of LGBTIQ+ people in Africa. The persistence of the suspicion that homosexuality is ‘unAfrican’ can therefore be explained, in part, through its genealogy within longer standing awareness of western efforts to contain population growth across the continent.

Confronting populationism: Feminist challenges to population control in an era of climate change

In this themed section, we identify three forms of populationism and bring them into conversation, which allows us to mount feminist challenges to present day forms of population control. These interventions are timely and necessary because of the continued prevalence of population control ideology and population alarmism in sustainable development and climate change policy and programs. We issue a direct challenge to scholarship that links population reduction with climate change adaptation and mitigation and the survival of the planet. The introduction provides an overview of our key argument, that seemingly disparate phenomena—technocratic approaches to fertility control, climate change securitization, Zika assemblages, neo-Malthusian articulations of the Anthropocene, and ‘climate-smart’ agriculture—are entangled with and expressions of demo, geo and biopopulationisms. We employ feminist critiques to contest these manifestations of population control that restrict bodies, reinforce boundaries, and create spaces of exclusion and violence.

EU S/A: a identidade desejada na formação inicial em Educação Física

Resumo A hegemonia da racionalidade neoliberal tem produzido novas formas de controle e regulação das populações. Enquanto instituição inserida nesse contexto, a universidade vem sendo capitulada pelas leis do mercado e chamada a operar a construção de certo tipo de sujeito afeito a um novo ethos de vida. A partir da noção de currículo como prática de significação que projeta e governa identidades, e compreendida como modalidade de investimento, como qualquer outra mercadoria ou bem de consumo, a formação superior não apenas determina em grande parte o que as pessoas devem fazer, mas, principalmente, quem são ou podem ser. Por conseguinte, especifica, também, o que elas não devem ser e os problemas que isso pode acarretar para quem não se alinhe aos seus ditames. Com base nesses pressupostos, neste artigo se examinam algumas das atividades presentes em um curso de formação inicial em Educação Física de uma Instituição de Ensino Superior privada que visam subjetivar seus sujeitos de modo a atender as referidas demandas. Para tanto, foram submetidos à análise cultural os textos escritos e orais coletados mediante observações seguidas de registros em diário de campo e compilação de mensagens eletrônicas encaminhadas à comunidade universitária, além das campanhas publicitárias e informações disponíveis no site institucional. Os resultados apontam que o modo de subjetivação colocado em circulação pelo currículo projeta a identidade do sujeito EU S/A.

GPU accelerated population annealing algorithm

Population annealing is a promising recent approach for Monte Carlo simulations in statistical physics, in particular for the simulation of systems with complex free-energy landscapes. It is a hybrid method, combining importance sampling through Markov chains with elements of sequential Monte Carlo in the form of population control. While it appears to provide algorithmic capabilities for the simulation of such systems that are roughly comparable to those of more established approaches such as parallel tempering, it is intrinsically much more suitable for massively parallel computing. Here, we tap into this structural advantage and present a highly optimized implementation of the population annealing algorithm on GPUs that promises speed-ups of several orders of magnitude as compared to a serial implementation on CPUs. While the sample code is for simulations of the 2D ferromagnetic Ising model, it should be easily adapted for simulations of other spin models, including disordered systems. Our code includes implementations of some advanced algorithmic features that have only recently been suggested, namely the automatic adaptation of temperature steps and a multi-histogram analysis of the data at different temperatures. Program summaryProgram Title: PAIsingProgram Files doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/sgzt4b7b3m.1Licensing provisions: Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0)Programming language: C, CUDAExternal routines/libraries: NVIDIA CUDA Toolkit 6.5 or newerNature of problem: The program calculates the internal energy, specific heat, several magnetization moments, entropy and free energy of the 2D Ising model on square lattices of edge length L with periodic boundary conditions as a function of inverse temperature β.Solution method: The code uses population annealing, a hybrid method combining Markov chain updates with population control. The code is implemented for NVIDIA GPUs using the CUDA language and employs advanced techniques such as multi-spin coding, adaptive temperature steps and multi-histogram reweighting.Additional comments: Code repository at https://github.com/LevBarash/PAising.The system size and size of the population of replicas are limited depending on the memory of the GPU device used.For the default parameter values used in the sample programs, L=64, θ=100, β0=0, βf=1, Δβ=0.005, R=20000, a typical run time on an NVIDIA Tesla K80 GPU is 151 seconds for the single spin coded (SSC) and 17 seconds for the multi-spin coded (MSC) program (see Section 2 for a description of these parameters).

Simulated effects of releasing pen‐raised deer into the wild to alter population‐level antler size

ABSTRACTThe ability to develop large antlers in penned deer (Odocoileus sp.) has increased interest in releasing pen‐raised deer to increase antler size of wild populations. We used a model based on population genetic theory with random removal as the form of population control and either 10% emigration and 10% immigration to represent a free‐ranging population (Free Range) or with no egress or ingress to represent a fenced property (Fenced). We compared results with a livestock model with no egress or ingress and selective removal of smaller antlered males as the form of population control (Best Case). We modeled release of fawns with an antler distribution averaging 200 gross Boone and Crockett (B&C) score at 5 rates (1%, 5%, 10%, 25%, and 50% replacement of existing population of 2,000) and report the change from a population average of 127.5. The impact of releasing pen‐raised deer into native populations was minimal below 25% replacement rate. Replacing 5% of a free‐ranging population with 100 pen‐raised deer increased B&C score by 0.8, whereas replacing 25% with 500 pen‐raised deer increased score by 12. Releasing pen‐raised deer into a fenced property was 50% more effective; a 25% replacement increased score by 18. The Best Case Model increased score by 33 at 25% replacement. The cost for each unit increase in score was US$115,000 in a free‐ranging population, US$75,000 in a fenced population, and US$33,000 in the best case. Our results suggest that altering genetic composition of white‐tailed deer populations is not feasible for free‐ranging populations and very costly within fenced populations. © 2016 The Authors. Wildlife Society Bulletin published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Wildlife Society.

The Digital Generation: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Within the framework of the new and multiple literacies, we have witnessed an explosion of the use of digital tools and venues (Paul & Wang, 2012, ch. 3). This has resulted in an exponential addition of new words and phrases to our mental lexicon such as e-mail, e-book, vlog, blog,podcast, apps, Facebook, and Google, and the proliferation of gadgets such as the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. In general, if you are a digital native, that means you have grown up with this technology and have never seen a world without it - and you might not even be able to imagine a world without this technology. If you are a digital immigrant like me, that means you have become acclimated to the use of such technology - albeit you might not be as comfortable, fearless, and forthright as the natives (see, e.g., Bauerlein, 2008, 2011b). There are variations in the degrees and types of native and immigrant, due to education level, occupational and economic status, geographic location, aptitude and attitude, and so on.Although there is some available research, it is time for scholars, most of whom are digital immigrants, to explore in depth the effects of this new epoch of digital technology on the behavior and aptitude of our children and young adolescents - the digital natives - in this brave new world of the 21st century. I have been intrigued and flummoxed by the constructs of floating brains and brains in a vat (Davis, 2002) and the multiverse (Hawking & Mlodinow, 2010). Nevertheless, I shudder just a bit when I consider that we now live in a world of multiple realities (Blackmore, 2004), which - for most digital natives and some digital immigrants - entails proceeding back and forth, and sometimes simultaneously, in a world that consists of real and virtual realities (Bauerlein, 2008, 2011b; Heim, 1993).I am not a Luddite. Along with using my computer for word processing, electronic mail, and surfing the Web intelligently and flippantly, I enjoy the service of a cell phone (texting and voice) and, most recently, listening to music on my MP3 player. But the brave new world of today's digital natives seems to be a radical extension of the one envisioned and described by Aldous Huxley in his two best-known books, the 1932 novel Brave New World and an essay first published in 1958, Brave New World Revisited (Huxley, 2005). In these books, Huxley expounded on the vices of living in a world that had become fast paced and was rapidly evolving. Even more interesting, he proffered that our manner of thinking, mores, and habits were shaped pervasively and incessantly by the processes and products of the new technology of his time. Huxley was consumed with the negative effects of overpopulation, forms of population control, and the abundance and availability of recreational drugs and pleasures. In essence, this negative utopia contributes to the adoption of character traits that lean toward materialism, narcissism, and hedonism - particularly, instant gratification. More recently, these same traits were also decried by Postman (1985), who expounded on the decline of rational and reasoned discourse and dialogue prompted by the ubiquity of television, with its intense focus on entertainment, even for nightly news shows. However, Huxley, Postman, and, indeed, many of us, most likely did not imagine the enormous - and purported - mental, behavioral, and physical evolutions that have paralleled the development and use of the new computer technology.I have little doubt that there are benefits (the good), disadvantages (the bad), and serious concerns (the ugly) that have emerged for aficionados during the digital age. There is a summary of the good, bad, and ugly in a recent book on children and adolescents who are - in our professional jargon - typically hearing (e.g., Bauerlein, 2011b). There have also been some articles on related topics such as the merits of using open captions (e.g., Strassman & O'Dell, 2012; see also the review in Paul & Wang, 2012, ch. …

Effects of Maternal Status on the Movement and Mortality of Sterilized Female White-Tailed Deer

Surgical sterilization by tubal ligation has been proposed as a technique for controlling white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations in urban or suburban areas where other forms of population control are impractical, but little is known about demographic rates in populations under management with surgical sterilization. We analyzed seasonal movement and mortality data collected during a 4-year study of surgical sterilization in suburban Chicago, Illinois, USA. We calculated 323 home range size estimates for 62 individual females within season and year. Non-gravid females without young exhibited home range sizes 52% larger than gravid females and females with fawns. Mortality rate was positively correlated with home range size. We suggest that the increased mortality rate observed in surgically sterilized females may be due to greater movement by non-maternal females. Population managers will need to account for potential effects of maternal status on movement and mortality when considering the use of sterilization for management of suburban populations of white-tailed deer.

Effects of Maternal Status on the Movement and Mortality of Sterilized Female White‐Tailed Deer

Abstract: Surgical sterilization by tubal ligation has been proposed as a technique for controlling white‐tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) populations in urban or suburban areas where other forms of population control are impractical, but little is known about demographic rates in populations under management with surgical sterilization. We analyzed seasonal movement and mortality data collected during a 4‐year study of surgical sterilization in suburban Chicago, Illinois, USA. We calculated 323 home range size estimates for 62 individual females within season and year. Non‐gravid females without young exhibited home range sizes 52% larger than gravid females and females with fawns. Mortality rate was positively correlated with home range size. We suggest that the increased mortality rate observed in surgically sterilized females may be due to greater movement by non‐maternal females. Population managers will need to account for potential effects of maternal status on movement and mortality when considering the use of sterilization for management of suburban populations of white‐tailed deer.

A Hero for our Time: Bernard Knox

A Hero forour Time: Bernard Knox MARIANNE MCDONALD -Bernard Knox, who died on 22 July 2010 at the age of ninety-five,was a man who lived about as long as his beloved Sophocles, who wrote about heroes and at the same time was known for his charm and "hail-fellow, well met" personality. Knox was a hero himself and the most learned as well as congenial man one would ever be privi leged tomeet. He would be welcomed into heaven, but ifhe went sightseeing in hell?some writers likeDante had tastes like that?he could charm Satan into giving him safe passage through, and even Cerberus would need no sop. I remember a story he enjoyed telling about the time he was fightingon the side of the partisans in Italy in World War II. Towards the end of thewar, as he was out walking a bit far from his camp, he met a column ofNazi soldiers whom he was able to persuade that thewar was over and to surren der to him, because then things would go better for them. They believed him, and he marched them back to camp as his prisoners, only for them to learn that thewar was in fact not yet over. He learned how to speak well in several languages and as a youth used to hold forth inLondon's Hyde Park, de veloping skillswhich not only made him a teacher to die for, but saved his own lifeon numerous occasions. He was aman who could have taken pride inhaving made things better not only for his students, many of whom he helped throughout their lives, but also, by fighting for causes inwhich he believed, for thewhole world. He was born in 1914 in Bradford, in theWest Riding of Yorkshire, and spoke with a Bradford accent throughout his life.He was a committed Socialist because he believed in the common ARION 18.2 FALL 20I0 132 a hero for our time: bernard knox man, sowhen he attended St. John's College, Cambridge, he made friends on the basis not of social class but of heart and of quality ofmind. Knox studied classics at Cambridge. In 1936, he took his A, about which he speaks ruefully: "I had made rather a mediocre showing in the final part of the Tripos, ending up with a second class (at least, I comforted myself, I did better thanAuden, who got a third, and Housman, who failed com pletely)."1 During that time, he was too busy at Cambridge, marching in theAnti-War Movement, to take his studies seri ously while Hitler was galloping to power. Bernard's sister, Elizabeth L. Campbell, had a picture of a demonstration with students holding placards that said things like "Scholarships, not battleships." Knox and his friendDonald Maclean are there shouting slogans. Knox's sisterwrote on the back of the photograph: "Bernard studying the Classics at Cambridge." During a march on Armistice Day, 11 November 1933, they met with physical and verbal abuse, including critical com mentary of the vegetable, fruit, and egg sort, but theywere successful in leaving theirwreath on the War Memorial. The secondary school that he attended in 1926 offered cadet military training. There he learned to shoot, livewith bugle calls, and conduct combat maneuvers. However, his at titude by the time of his Cambridge years was that all war was as senseless as thewar described by Euripides inhis Tro jan Women, perhaps the greatest anti-war play everwritten. (Euripides also strikes a very modern tone?something I'm sure thatKnox appreciated?for example, inhisHelen, when he suggests thatwar was divinely instigated as a form of pop ulation control! Even in the fifthcentury bc, thatwas a mor dant take?the thought thatworld overpopulation was to be regulated bywar.) Knox was also influenced by the then cur rent novels and memoirs?from Robert Graves' Goodbye to All That to Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on theWest ern Front?as well as the poetry ofWilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Isaac Rosenberg. His thinking, then,was influ enced by both ancient and modern literature. Marianne McDonald 133 In addition to all this,Knox was shaped by his family's ex perience: they...

People on the Move: Challenging migration on NGOs, migrants and sex work categorization

Migration policies are a form of population control: the issue is who is controlled, how, and by whom. Alison Crosby examines the categories that define and contain people who move and the possibilities they can have, and argues for a common standard of dignity, rights and security for all who are on the move, regardless of status or category.

The analyse of the infanticide cases in the counties of Mures and Sibiu 1993 - 2003

The analyse of the infanticide cases in the counties of Mures and Sibiu 1993 - 2003: The autors present, a statistic evaluation of infanticide in a decade in two counties from Romania, also from forensic but also judicial and social and economic point of view. Infanticide is the practice of someone intentionally causing the death of an infant. Often it is the mother who commits the act, but criminology recognises various forms of non-maternal child murder. In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible, whereas in most modern societies the practice is considered immoral and criminal. Nonetheless, it still takes place - in the Western world usually because of the parent’s mental illness or violent behavior, and in some poor countries as a form of population control, sometimes with tacit societal acceptance. Female infanticide is more common than the killing of male babies. In Romania, the Infanticide Act defines infanticide as a specific crime that can only be committed by the mother during the first days of her baby’s life.

Comparing cost-effectiveness of commercial harvesting, state-funded culling, and recreational deer hunting in New Zealand

The 7 taxa of deer introduced to New Zealand are officially regarded as pests but also are valued by hunters and commercial harvesters, who often debate the need for deer population control. Some hunters argue that it should be more cost-effective to enhance existing private hunting effort than to use state-employed cullers to kill deer. To explore that argument, we combined predator-prey and economic theory to predict how net revenue (carcass value minus cost of harvesting it) for a commercial helicopter-based venison-recovery operation was likely to vary with deer density and to result in stable harvest equilibria when marginal net revenue was zero. We then adapted that model to simulate the cost of state-funded deer control and the net satisfaction obtained by ground-based recreational hunters. Key findings were that 1) payment of incentives to commercial harvesters usually will be more cost-effective than state-funded culling, 2) payment of incentives to recreational hunters usually will not be effective unless time costs can be reduced at little monetary cost, and 3) ground-based cullers will be more effective than helicopter-based hunters at attaining low deer densities in dense forest. Key management implications are that commercial hunting can be cost-effectively manipulated to enhance control of deer populations, but neither commercial nor recreational hunting is likely to be a cost-effective alternative to state-funded control where very low densities are required in inaccessible or difficult-to-hunt areas. Although developed for deer control in New Zealand, the models are applicable to any situation in which harvesting is used as a form of population control.

DO DIATOM DIETS ACT AS BIRTH CONTROL PILLS FOR MARINE COPEPODS?

Ianora, A.Stazione Zoologica A. Dohrn, Villa Comunale 80121 Naples, ItalyTraditionally, diatoms have been regarded as providing the bulk of the food that sustains the marine food chain to top consumers and important fisheries. However, this view has recently been challenged on the basis of laboratory studies showing that these small, unicellular algae possess anti‐mitotic properties similar to the cytotoxic compounds isolated from numerous marine and terrestrial higher plants. In fact, when copepods, the principal predators of diatoms, are fed diatom diets, they produce abnormal eggs that either fail to develop to hatching or hatch into malformed nauplii that die soon afterwards. The aldehydes responsible for this anti‐cell growth activity have recently been isolated and these compounds have been shown to arrest not only the development of copepod and sea urchin embryos, but also the proliferation of human carcinoma cells. In terrestrial environments, there are many reports of secondary metabolites produced by plants that interfere with the reproductive capacity of grazing animals, and which act as a form of population control. But this type of biological model is new for the marine environment where most of the attention on plant‐animal interactions has focused on feeding deterrents and poisoning compounds. Such “birth‐control” compounds may discourage herbivory by sabotaging future generations of grazers, thereby allowing diatom blooms to persist when grazing pressure would normally have caused them to crash.

Population information campaign in Swaziland: balancing individual values and national development goals

Due to the negative connotation many African communities attach to any form of population control, communication campaigns can not only provide people with information regarding the risks of uncontrolled population growth, but also positively change their attitudes towards population control. The article examines the need for popular information and communication campaigns in Swaziland as instruments to change attitudes and behavior. It also suggests an intervention program as an approach to population control in the country.

Ashkenazic Jewry and the European marriage pattern: A Preliminary survey of Jewish marriage age

In the course of early modern times, the population of Western Europe developed a family and marriage pattern which differed sharply from that of most of the rest of the world. This "European marriage pattern" was marked by very late marriage, by the extreme rarity of households containing more than one couple and by the frequent presence of young unmarried servants.1 This seemingly unique pattern has significance not only because of its impact on the nature of family life, but also because of its possible connection with the emergence of other patterns of modern western life. Late marriage seems to have been connected with systems of widespread free land tenure and private property. By delaying marriage, young people were waiting to accumulate sufficient property before founding a family. (Often they served as servants in the homes of unrelated families during the period before their marriage.) This period of "delayed gratification" was a primitive form of population control and a sign of rational control over one's economic situation. By establishing a long period between physical maturation and marriage, it helped create the separate state of adolescence with its many sexual and emotional strains. It also played a role in the transition from marriage choices controlled by parents for their minor children to marriage partners chosen by the spouses themselves, many of whom were now adults whose parents had either died or retired.

Infant Abandonment in Early China

Examining the birth and population control methods employed by a given culture reveals much about the power and politics of its religious and legal institutions; it can also yield important conclusions about the hierarchical relations between young and old and male and female. But conventional methods for controlling the size and gender composition of a family in the early phases of Chinese history have received little attention. In this essay I will focus on the ways in which one important form of population control, infant abandonment, was discussed and practiced in Han times, paying particular attention to the various rationales given for it and the arguments made against it.