FROM POPULATION-CONTROL TO REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS - IDEOLOGICAL INFLUENCES IN POPULATION-POLICY

This paper is a review of the interdisciplinary literature examining i deological influences which have helped to shape population control po licy in recent decades. A powerful critique of what has become a top-d own, ethnocentric approach towards a narrowly focused policy has emerg ed both from scholars within the Third World itself and from those in the more developed regions. Concerns with issues such as outside inter vention in national sever eignty, ethical aspects associated with the implementation of fertility control programmes, the exclusion of Third World scholars from research programmes within their own countries, a nd the unwillingness of programmes to consider complex social and cult ural dimensions of high fertility, are among those which this literatu re has raised. The role of professional demographers, as part of the p opulation establishment network within the USA, in providing respectab le justification for questionable policy intervention, is also examine d.