Shalini Randeria: Population Panic, Ethno-nationalism and the Anti-Feminist Backlash

The lecture addressed the politics of demographic panics the world over, which are entangled with geo-politics and the increasing strength of ethno-national identities. Imaginations of the purity of the nation, perceptions of differential fertility rates coupled with increasing international migration fuel pro-natalist discourses and policies especially in Eastern Europe, which is also witnessing a strong anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ rights backlash. The same mix of factors, however, lead to selective anti-natalism for the poor and for religious minorities in India, for example, where a model of economic development based on neo-Malthusian premises continues to animate a state-driven population control program. The contemporary dynamics of the governance of reproduction in a world imagined as simultaneously under-populated and over-populated will be considered against the background of the global history of (post)- colonial population control.

About our Speaker:

Shalini Randeria is the Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Professor of Social Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, as well as the Director of the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy. She serves on the Board of European Forum Alpbach, the Board of Trustees of the Central European University (CEU), the Academic Advisory Board of the Wien Museum as well as the Advisory Board of the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations. Her research focuses on the anthropology of law, state and policy, reproductive rights, population policy and gender, the anthropology of globalisation and development, displacement, and civil society, social movements and NGOs.