The Cairo Consensus: Demographic Surveys, Women's Empowerment, and Regime Change in Population Policy

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Lexington Books, 2007 - 261 pages
In the early 1990s international population policy faced a crisis--it was being attacked from the left and the right, from inside and outside, for a range of failings--of ethics, fact, method, and vision. The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, provided a new policy consensus that helped to overcome this crisis. Starting from the question of how the transition from "population control" to "women's empowerment" was formulated as an international consensus, The Cairo Consensus maps the discourses, technical practices, and institutional practices that made this transition possible and stable. Demographic surveys in particular emerge as a crucial, though often overlooked, mechanism for policy production and stability. Using detailed empirical material, including over 30 interviews, combined with cutting edge social and political theory, Saul Halfon offers a new look at population policy that will interest scholars of science and technology, international studies, women's studies, development studies, and post-colonial theory.

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Contents

Introduction
3
Structured Disunity Rethinking Consensus as a Metaphor for Getting Along
15
Population Discourses
29
OverPopulating the World Discourses on The Population Problem 1945 to the Present
31
Reading Cairo
63
ReConfiguring Womens Empowerment From Politics to Planning
83
Technical Practices in the Population Network
101
Contesting Surveys CoProducing Demography and Population Policy
103
Narrating Unmet Need
155
Instituting the Cairo Regime
189
Translating Unmet Need into Market Demand Contraceptive Development after Cairo
191
Conclusion Projecting Population Policy
219
Bibliography
225
Index
245
About the Author
Copyright

Standardizing Surveys Building Consensus through Technical Practice
131

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About the author (2007)

Saul Halfon is assistant professor of science & technology in society at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

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