Drawing on media, cultural and social theory approaches, this book takes a fresh look at the concept of ‘population’, focusing on the ways in which the concept governs ways of thinking about identities and belonging; overpopulation and underpopulation; otherness; and political concepts of ‘forgotten people’.
In a world of increasing mobility and migration, population size and composition come under persistent scrutiny across public policy, public debate, and ?lm and television. Drawing on media, cultural and social theory approaches, this book takes a fresh look at the concept of ‘population’ as a term that circulates outside the traditional disciplinary areas of demography, governance and statistics—a term that gives coherence to notions such as community, nation, the world and global humanity itself. It focuses on understanding how the concept of population governs ways of thinking about our own identities and forms of belonging at local, national and international levels; on the manner in which television genres ?xate on depictions of overpopulation and underpopulation; on the emergence of questions of ethics of belonging and migration in relation to cities; on attitudes towards otherness; and on the use by an emergent ‘alt-right’ politics of population in ‘forgotten people’ concepts. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, geography and media and cultural studies with interests in questions of belonging, citizenship and population.
1. Introduction: Population as a Social, Media and Cultural Concept Part
1: Population, Identity and Governance in Public Debates and (Inter)national
Policy
2. Fertility Promotion, Power and Contemporary Eugenics
3. Crowded
Concepts and the Politics of the Big Nation
4. Population and Identity Part
2: Popular Culture, Population Size and the Composition of Peoples
5.
Overpopulation in Visual Representation
6. Underpopulation and Apocalyptic
Narratives
7. Genetics, Population Purity and the Race of Devils Part
Three: Ethics for Belonging to a Population
8. The Forgotten People
9.
Bodies, Racialised Populations and Practices of Othering
10. Attitudes of
Welcome: Ethics of Cohabitation and Sustainability
Rob Cover is Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne Australia. He is the author of Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity: Unliveable Lives?, Vulnerability and Exposure: Footballer Scandals, Masculine Identity and Ethics, Emergent Identities: New Sexualities, Gender and Relationships in a Digital Era, Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self and Flirting in the Era of #MeToo: Negotiating Intimacy. He is co-editor of the anthology Youth, Sexuality and Sexual Citizenship.
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