Bongaarts - 2019 - IPBES, 2019. Summary for policymakers of the globa

BOOK REVIEWS
Once Upon a Time in

Germany … : A Review
Essay∗
LANDIS MACKELLAR
This book—Hostile Takeover: How Islam Hinders Progress and Threatens Society—was not
released; it escaped last summer (August 2018) in a hail of lawsuits when Random
House, one of whose imprints owned the rights, balked at its publication on account
of the manuscript’s raving disparagement of Islam and its Muslim believers. In the
end, the book was bought by a Munich financial publishing house which laughed
all the way to the bank as Feindliche Übernahme flew off the shelves. It was easily
the non-fiction trade book of the year in Germany. Opinion polls showed that 80
percent of the German public was sympathetic to the views that elevated Legal’s
blood pressure at Random House.
Dear reader, I read it. But, probably like other policy cognoscenti, I approached
the checkout counter shamefaced and removed the distinctive, oh-so-recognizable
iridescent green dust jacket immediately after repairing to the café to read.
If you read German, I recommend the book; if not, do not hold your breath
waiting for an English-language edition. Maybe someone from the American Re-
naissance crowd will buy the translation rights but, given the tempestuous legal
history of the book in Germany, these may be poxy. However, even if you are
language-constrained, it is worth knowing about this book. Keats said that a fact
is not a truth unless you love it. Goebbels said that a lie is a truth if enough peo-
ple believe it. Feindliche Übernahme gives opportunity to reflect on these frightfully
complementary insights. It is, for the field of demography that this journal serves,
an outstanding example of how dodgy science, weaponized by obscure family-and-
friends peer reviewed journals and the popular media, especially the internet and
social media, bends popular opinion and by extension policy. The book deserves to
be hammered, and your critic intends to do so.1
Thilo Sarrazin is rumbustious. He is a former Finance Senator for Berlin (2002–
2009) and member of the Bundesbank board (2010–2011; he resigned rather than be
fired following an ill-founded comment about Jews possessing a distinctive gene).
But Sarrazin is at heart a traditional, if somewhat dour, Social Democrat, which is
why he enrages the German political establishment.2 His notoriety is not new. In
∗
Thilo Sarrazin, Feindliche Übernahme: Wie der Islam den Forschritt behindert und die Gesellschaft bedroht.
Munich: Finanzbuch Verlag, 2018. 495 pp.
P O P U L AT I O N A N D D E V E L O P M E N T R E V I E W 4 5 ( 3 ) : 6 6 5 – 6 8 6 ( S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 ) 665
17284457, 2019, 3, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padr.12283 by Cochrane France, Wiley Online Library on [11/10/2023]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License
666 PDR 45(3) BOOK REVIEWS
2010, he raised a ruckus with his book Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany is Do-
ing Away with Itself; Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt). Part of his appeal is dry wit: “Being
wealthy in Germany these days is immoral unless you made the money in sports
or entertainment.” Part of it is the demagogue’s perennial hook: I am only saying
out loud what you think but are afraid to say. Part of it is that his prose is accessible;
neither too highbrow nor too vulgar. The incessant use of bullet points and we’ve
just-left-this-town and here’s-the-next-one-we’re-headed-for road signs are help-
ful for quick reading, but they also remind you that you are on a strictly guided tour.
Similarly, there is overuse of shock italics; the guide is frog-marching you along.
And so, to the book. Sarrazin’s argument is as follows. For centuries, Islam in
Europe, having been expelled from Spain and latterly repelled at the gates of Vi-
enna, was confined to Turkey and a few patches of that miserable neighborhood
today known as the Western Balkans. Over the last 75 years, Europe has, in a folly
unparalleled in modern history, taken to its bosom a substantial and growing Mus-
lim minority population that, on average, (1) does not accept European values of
democracy, wellbeing, and freedom; (2) despises European culture and religion; and
is, in no particular order, (3) oversexed (the men), (4) overfertile (the women), (5)
ineducable (the young), and (6) poorly performing overall (everyone). There is, this
critic would agree, more than enough evidence to indict and so, Auf gehts! Let’s go!
Chapter 1 is foundational for the rest of Feindliche Übernahme; therefore, it de-
serves more attention than it warrants on its merits. A believer in induction to the
point of pedantry, Sarrazin starts from the source. This is the Koran, which he de-
clares to have read from alpha to omega (so to speak) in a respected translation,
as well as the hadiths. The divide between believers and non-believers is absolute;
the first are going to heaven and the second to hell. The believer should not be
distracted by any knowledge not derived from the sacred text. Non-believers are
fair game; jihad demands conquest and annihilation, whether through conversion
or more prejudicial measures. Islam is a political system in religion-drag; there is
no possible compromise between the imams and the Montesquieuan rule of law.
Women are inferior, periodically unclean creatures from the holy get-go. Those who
hope for a Westernized, liberal, humanist, historicized, critical Islam are delusional.
Those Muslim preachers, theologians, and public intellectuals who advocate for one
do so, Sarrazin correctly reports, at their professional and personal risk.
Sarrazin reproduces copious excerpts to support this swingeing criticism. But
his hermeneutics consist not of exegesis, the search from scratch for what the text
means; but eisegesis, scouring the text to prove that it means what he has already
decided it means. Sarrazin is correct, to the extent that this reader (never hav-
ing cracked the cover) would know, that the Koran and other early texts contain
propositions that are in varying degree absurd and obnoxious. But that is true of
any religious Grundtext. If a religion were not founded in mumbo-jumbo legitimacy
claims and humbug secular rules, would it—adoration of the Archangel Uriel, Bud-
dhism, Christianity, Eckankar, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Rastafarianism, Santeria,
Satanism, Voodoo, Wicca, Zoroastianism; you name it—be a religion? No. A religion
that hopes to become a going concern requires only two things: a hailing message
(Althusser there) to attain critical mass, and a pitch that its adherents can employ
to sell it on; whether by preaching merits, promising profits, or swinging swords.
Judging Islam, and by extension Islamic society and the Muslims who comprise it,
based on the Koran makes as much sense as judging Judaism and Jews on the Torah,
BOOK REVIEWS PDR 45(3) 667
Christianity and Christians on the Gospels, Mormonism and Mormons on the Book
of Mormon, or Scientology and Scientologists on Dianetics.
In Chapter 2, Sarrazin presents a depressing gazetteer of the Islamic world. That
is not difficult work and was much better done by Bernard Lewis in What Went
Wrong? (Oxford University Press, 2002). The statistics, as presented, for example, in
the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) annual Arab Human Development
Reports, are wretched. If you were conceived behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance
and had to choose what kind of society you wanted to be born into, it would, on the
UNDP and other standard international indicators, not be an Islamic one. When In-
donesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, and Tunisia are your star pupils, you
know you are teaching a weak class. Is Islam to blame? Sarrazin makes a credible
case that it is—in part. But that “in part” is an attenuation of which he is incapable.
Sarrazin’s ears are acute when picking up the signal he wants to hear, but deaf to the
noise he does not—capitalism, colonialism, Crusaders, Israel, Jews, oil, orientalists,
Ottomans, Sykes-Picot; great power meddling, challenging weather and topogra-
phy for the most part, unmanageable borders, etc. Sarrazin’s argument that the
belief forces he has identified in the Koran contribute to the Islamic world’s poor
performance on the standard indicators of progress has traction. But how strong
is the contribution; where is the religious signal in all the historical, geopolitical,
environmental, and cultural noise?
Chapter 3 on Islamic society is wide in scope and long in length, but the main
axes of Sarrazin’s analysis are obvious. Islam is a prison from whose religious walls
the believer cannot escape. Curiosity, investigation, and openness to the new are
stifled at every turn—the madrassa mentality. Sarrazin’s favored source is Jacob
Burkhardt (1818–1897). Eminent though that cultural historian may be, this is
like analyzing abstract expressionism on the basis of Modern Painters; or applying
the critical methods of Johnson and Hazlitt to Naked Lunch. Blowing the Bamiyan
Buddhas to smithereens and knocking noses off statues does not endear the good
Muslims responsible, but the lack of an Islamic representational art tradition has
given us the marvels of Arabic calligraphy. If religious beliefs cannot be judged by
the standard of truth, they can be judged by their artistic sedimentation—a risky
exercise, but one blending aesthetics and materialism (there is, for example, a
flourishing Islamic art market), more reliable than the airy assessment of theologi-
cal virtues. By these standards, Islam scores right up there with the best. Sarrazin is
exercised that the music of the Islamic world has produced no polyphony, but then
neither have the musics of India, China, or Japan; all three representing cultures
that have done well. Sarrazin denounces Arab architecture as “wild, lacking in
plan and public infrastructure.” On the contrary, medieval Arab town planning,
especially its management of the precious water resource, is legendary. Or, consider
the Alhambra. Sarrazin’s criticism goes on: the Arabs were ignorant of timekeeping
and geodesy, incapable of technological innovation, etc. (here Sarrazin is borrowing
from Lewis who, while far better grounded in scholarship, nevertheless took strong
criticism). This tone is what led one reviewer to describe Feindliche Übernahme as
Islamophobia masquerading as scholarship.
Chapter 3 introduces (and Chapter 4 returns to) one of Sarrazin’s core con-
cerns: cognitive competence as measured by students’ standardized reading and
mathematics test scores. As early as Schafft sich ab, he was concerned that Muslim
(then mostly Turkish) students were dragging down standards in the German pub-
lic education system. This is an argument that deserves policy attention. But, as he
did with Burkhardt for art and culture, Sarrazin has found a pet scholar—Heiner
Rindermann, the go-to European professor for academic proof that immigrants are
ruining the schools.3 Rindermann is excoriated by the same forces that have at-
tacked intelligence research for the last three quarters of a century, destroying a
number of reputations along the way.4 Your critic, ignorant of psychology, genetics,
and the advanced statistical techniques that inform them, will not dip his flimsy oar
into these choppy waters. Sarrazin’s conclusion is predictable: since Islam makes
its believers stupid; the presence of Muslim students reduces the quality of pub-
lic education. The argument is not new; the roots of the current white nationalist
movement in the United States, while running back to eugenicists Grant, Stoddard
& Co. in the first quarter of the last century, get there via the 1950s anti-school inte-
gration movement; e.g., psychologists Garrett, Shuey & Co. Closer to demographic
home and within living memory, race enthusiasts such as MacDonald, Abernathy,
and Co. hijacked the editorial board of the then-Kluewer journal Population and
Environment for a few years before being ousted.5
In The Dream Songs (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), poet John
Berryman’s alter ego Mr. Bones was mighty big on moral. In Feindliche Über-
nahme, Sarrazin is mighty big on gender. Chapter 3 also allows him space to
expound at length his views, which are easy for this critic to endorse, on the posi-
tion of women in Islamic society. That the policymakers of the Christian West have
pussyfooted around this issue is the product of refined cynicism; although so, too,
is their tiptoeing around the position of women in orthodox Judaism; and indeed,
in their own house. Women’s bodies; their faces, their gazes and attire (which is
where the oppression starts according to Zana Ramadani,6 Sarrazin’s go-to here);
their intimate parts and the pleasures to be had therewith; and their fecundability
with its consequences for bloodline, honor, and property—lie in contested territory.
Evolution declared, humanity wages, and no masterpiece of diplomacy will secure
peace in, the war between the sexes.7 In the Islamic world, Sarrazin argues, preco-
cious arranged marriage of daughters is a religious and cultural necessity because,
sooner rather than later, the young women are going to realize that they are sitting
on idle sexual capital; when they do, they will scamper off and invest it as they
fancy. Perhaps this is true in the tough parts of Neukölln (the Berlin borough, of
which more below), as Sarrazin claims. But the system has certainly weakened in
the North of Africa, where the unemployed young men are not worth marrying, the
young women are now better educated, and their age at marriage is rising pari passu.
Sarrazin is on solid ground when he expresses outrage at female genital cut-
ting, by any even mildly functionalist argument designed to suppress female sex-
ual pleasure and thereby agency. He correctly blames mothers, grandmothers, and
aunts for promoting and enforcing the practice. He could have also discussed such
women’s role in the enforcement of suppressive dress codes (Ramadani is good on
this). Young males hopped up on testosterone, sexual deprivation, boredom, and
religion may be the sidewalk Soldati of the modesty police, but older women are the
back-office Capi who run the crew.8
Chapter 4 is the heart of the volume, and the one to which the social scientist
will probably be most attentive, for it is here that Sarrazin dives into the numbers.
He starts by criticizing the Statistiches Bundesamt’s official definition of someone of

immigration background as a person (1) born abroad or (2) of whose parents at least
one does not have German citizenship by birth. This means that, for example and
to Sarrazin’s concern, the grandchildren of naturalized foreign-born German citi-
zens are not considered to be of immigrant background. This concern reflects the
one-drop-of-blood fallacy; so empty of sociological validity that it need not detain
us here, apart from a respectful tip of the hat to its longevity. Working (grudgingly)
from the 2016 Microcensus, Sarrazin reports that 22.5 percent of the German pop-
ulation and 35.4 percent of those under 15 are of immigration background. Not all
are from Muslim countries, of course, but he reckons that in Berlin, a third of those
from an immigration background are, as is a tenth of the total population of the
city.
Sarrazin’s demography is predictably pessimistic. He cites the 2015 Pew-IIASA
study,9 which shows Muslims accounting in 2050 for between 8.7 and 19.7 percent
of the population in Germany, as opposed to 4.1 percent in 2010—doubling at best,
quintupling at worst. By 2050 between one-third and one-half of all births will be
Muslim (there is evidently some Muslim gene like the Jewish one that got Sarrazin
into hot water at the Bundesbank). Your 2050 Muslim will be a clone of your 2010
Muslim (induction again; “As I have clearly demonstrated in Chapters 1 through
3, …”), so the process of German cultural displacement and debasement can only
accelerate.10 To his credit, Sarrazin understands reasonably well the age distribution
and population dynamics; that population has memory. But the tragedy of demog-
raphy is that those not adequately schooled in the art get its vital fundamentals
under their belt in a few hours of mathematical recreation—linear algebra requires
neither genius nor reflection—and then begin to preach policy. The engineers who
designed the disastrous Chinese one-child policy are a good example.
The poor socioeconomic situation of Muslims in Germany, which no one can
deny so far as population averages go, is described over the course of some 50 pages.
First of the problems cited is lagging cognitive competence scores and inferior school
performance, as if there is nothing that better social and education policies can do
about them. Second, petty criminality; mostly young persons in conflict with the
law, as if there is nothing that better social-, justice-, and security-sector policies can
do about it. Third, Lebanese (mostly Arab, some Kurdish) clan-based grand crim-
inality, as if these gangs were not by now as native to Germany as is Le Milieu to
le Midi in France.11 Fourth, poor labor market performance, as if the thoroughbred
East German Ossies are doing fine and there is no problem of outright discrimination
against Muslims. Sarrazin’s empirical observations on the lagging Muslim minority
are informative and seem statistically sound (although his overreliance on popula-
tion averages is deplorable and his reliance on the Microcensus has been criticized),
but he is uninterested in any possible causation other than Islam. He is does not
understand that it is not the average Muslim that is of concern, it is certain Muslim
sub-populations that have become, as this critic put it in a previous piece, “a civic
nuisance.”12 There is also a striking thought experiment that Sarrazin does not carry
out. What would a Germany without Muslims look like?13
Perhaps because his wife taught school there, Sarrazin is especially concerned
about the situation in Neukölln—the Berlin borough with one of the highest im-
migrant proportions, mostly Turkish, but with a highly visible Arab population, as
well. To read Sarrazin, one would think that Neukölln is a cancerous tumor, a fetid
presence in the municipal body politic. To set the record straight, Neukölln is an
immense district, stretching all the way from the city center to the city limits. As a
result, and not surprising in a city of cantering if no longer galloping change, it is
a district of highly variable geography. Good parts, bad parts, like Queens, Brook-
lyn, or the Bronx; Manhattan, for that matter. Historically a uniformly working
class area, back in the day, it was a Communist stronghold; Goebbels once led a
Stormtrooper march on it. “Neukölln was the kind of place that, if you were born
there, you wanted to get out,” one elderly Berliner put it to me. But gentrification
started seeping in from neighboring Kreuzberg a good decade ago and there are now
parts of northern Neukölln where your critic could not afford to live. These areas
are not just up and coming; like Dick Van Dyke’s get-up-and-go, they got up and
went. Yet, there are also areas of deprivation and, yes, some parts where one thinks
one has been transported to the kasbah. Neukölln is also, Sarrazin omits to note,
one of the hippest, most happening districts in Berlin. In summer, parts of it are an
open-air bar for the London three-day weekend EasyJet crowd. If your daughter or
son moved to Berlin for youthful adventure after university, odds are good s/he is
flatsharing and misbehaving in Neukölln.
Where does Sarrazin leave us after nearly 400 pages of rant and rage against
Islam, its believers, and their impact on Germany? Abstracting from his many sub-
headings in Chapter 5, he has four major policy recommendations.
First, policy should ensure that Islam be as subject to criticism, even ridicule,
as any other religion. That is easy to agree with; if you can dish it out, as some
Muslims do with gusto and worse (suicide bombs, vehicle attacks, firearms mas-
sacres, beheadings, etc.), you can take it, too. In his novel Filth (Jonathan Cape,
1998), Irvine Welsh proposed a terse moral principal that has not received nearly
the attention that its economy and broad applicability deserve: Same rules apply.
Second, Europe should identify its interests and defend them. This is reasonable
in our Westphalian world. But “Europe” (ipso Germany) is a social partnership. Its
interests and responsibilities; its assets and liabilities, encompass all who are jointly
and severally engaged—not just some romantically constructed, racially and reli-
giously pure sub-population descended from a misty knights-and-ladies past. As
the Swedes say, once you have taken the Devil into your boat, you must row him
ashore, which in this case means dealing effectively with Muslim integration and
assimilation – using policy to overcome the barriers Sarrazin plausibly describes
as formidable without coming close to convincing that they are insurmountable.
White Christian Europe is spilt milk. Regret it if you wish, forget it whether you do
or not, and move on.14
Third, immigration policy should be stripped of ideology and wishful thinking.
The first leg of the recommendation can be ignored. Ideology is like original sin; no
policy, having been born in it as all are, can be cleansed of it. Sarrazin is steeped in
the fallacy—discredited by postmodernism; one of the few things we can thank it
for—that ideology is false belief. Love gone wrong, for Keats; a failure of sales and
marketing, for Goebbels—not that there is much difference between the two; hence,
the frightful complementarity. As to wishful thinking, what Sarrazin is calling for
is simply more realism and less idealism; more Realpolitik and less Wunschdenken.
A drier, stiffer, policy martini; more gin, less vermouth, hold the fruit. That is a
sound recommendation, and it is already being implemented. The German voter

has howled, as has the European; Berlin and Brussels have heard.
Fourth, and requiring more attention, Germany requires a seri-
ous foreign and development policy vis à vis the Islamic world (Eine der
islamischen Welt zugewandte und ernsthafte Aussen- und Entwicklungspolitik). The
sub-recommendations: (1) the relationship between religion and the State needs
to be examined in Germany; (2) the expected relationship between Muslims, the
State, and society in Germany needs to be made clear; (3) German integration
policy needs to be demystified; (4) German education policy needs to support
assimilation and integration, mostly by tougher standards; and (5) reporting on
Islam and Muslims in Germany needs to be transparent, open, and complete.
Under each of these, Sarrazin has ideas on feasible practical and concrete first steps;
some of these ideas are good and he should be credited with them; as he should be
criticized for the ones that are not. Same rules apply.
But the recommendation is not to be read bottom-up. It needs to be read top-
down.
What Sarrazin states is that all this lies in the domain of Aussenpolitik; foreign
policy. His message is stark. Muslims, wherever they live in Germany and for how-
ever long they have lived there, wherever they or their parents or their grandparents
were born, whatever passport they carry, whatever university they teach at or at-
tend; whatever mosque they preach at or attend, are not German. They are foreign.
Aliens on German soil.
That is a dangerous thought. We heard the like from Germany before. It never
went away. The Nationalsozialistische Untergrund (NSU) affair and the murder of Wal-
ter Lübcke in Hesse give us a taste of its murderous consequences and illustrate the
shambolic response of the supposedly mighty German state. Once upon a time in
Germany …
Notes
1 Why waste print on a lousy book? do so—too many of its dwindling voters
Population and Development Review is not re- share his views, especially the Ossies (those
luctant to be harsh on influential books from the former East Germany; the Deutsche
when needed. See Aristide Zolberg’s re- Demokratische Republik or DDR). However,
view of Peter Brimelow’s Alien Nation and significant, Sarrazin has had no real
(Random House, 1995) in Vol. 21, No. 3 truck with the extreme right Alternativ für
(Sep., 1995), pp. 659-664 and Geoffrey Deutchland, except for addressing its party
McNicoll’s review of Patrick Buchanan’s conference. This was the most recent casus
Death of the West (St. Martin’s Press, 2002) belli between Sarrazin and the SPD.
in Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 2002), pp. 797-800. 3 https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/hsw/psy
Both reviews are included in the April 2019 chologie/professuren/entwpsy/team/rinder
online collection International Migration: An mann.php.en.
Anthology from Population and Development Re-
4 It could be worse. In Chapter 4,
view (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page
when cognitive competence arises again, his
/journal/17284457/homepage/specialonline
source for Denmark is an article by Emil
issue).
Kirkegaard and John Fuerst, both outright
2 The Social Democratic Party (Soziais- cranks. Kirkegaard, who is cited a few other
tische Partei Deutschlands; SPD) keeps threat- times, as well, is the editor of the OpenPsych
ening to kick Sarrazin out but is afraid to family of journals (www. openpsych.net),
comprised of Open Differential Psychology, Open gle episode that would have substantially
Behavioral Genetics, and Open Quantitative Soci- strengthened his case, and the one that put
ology and Political Science. These are tenderly paid to Willkommenkultur—the mass sexual
peer-reviewed online journals specializing in assaults in the Cathedral Square of Cologne
scientifically controversial (bordering on du- on Silvesternacht 2015–2016, committed by
bious) politically incorrect pieces derived in roving bands of young asylum seekers tipsy
part from (Roger) Pearsonian hereditarian- on beer and connected by social media and
ism and in part from more novel and eso- text messaging. While the Bundespolizei re-
teric streams of thought such as evolution- sponse was incompetent (they were acutely
ary psychology. They lack the charming retro understaffed and did not take women’s first
vibe of Mankind Quarterly, where many of frantic phone calls seriously), the poor se-
their contributors also publish. However, for curity response can in no way justify the
a doughty editorial defense of the journals, incident, which can only be characterized, al-
see https://openpsych.net/paper/57. though its scale is still debated, as one of gang
5 Sarrazin believes there is at least one sexual predation. For analysis of how the
genetic source for the cognitive compe- pre- and post-Islamic ideals of male virility,
tence gap—inter-cousin marriage. He may the latter long compromised by schizophre-
be on to something. For an economic cri- nia regarding relations between the sexes,
tique of Muslim first-cousin marriage, see have been distorted by failed modernity, see
Lena Edlund (2018), “Cousin Marriage Is philosopher Nadia Tazi, Le genre intraitable.
Not Choice: Muslim Marriage and Underde- Politiques de la virilité dans le monde musulman
velopment,” AEA Papers and Proceedings, 108 (Arles, Actes Sud 2018), as well as the inter-
(May):353–57. (https://www.aeaweb.org/ view with her in Le Monde for 11 May, 2019.
articles?id=10.1257/pandp.20181084) Tazi believes that Islamic extremism exac-
erbates, but only that, a deeper and more
6 Ramadani, of Kosovar origin, is a
structural problem.
politician (Christian Democratic Union,
Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, 9 The Future of World Religions: Population
CDU), journalist, and founder of the German Growth Projections 2010-2050. https://assets
branch of the breast-baring feminist protest .pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/
group FEMEN. A critic of Islam, her most 11/2015/03/PF_15.04.02_ProjectionsFullRep
relevant publication is Die verschleierte Gefahr: ort.pdf
Die Macht der muslimischen Mütter und der Toler- 10 By Chapter 5, in 2050, Muslims will
anzwahn der Deutschen (The Veiled Danger: The be the majority population. It is not clear how
Power of Muslim Mothers and the Deluded Tol- the acceleration occurred between Chapters
erance of the German People), Munich: Europa 4 and 5. Do not blame the post Pew-IIASA
Verlag, 2017. 2014-2015 migrant surge, a one-off event
7 One is put in mind of the Danish- which dwindled to a trickle thanks to reason-
German border dispute dating from the Sec- ably effective EU external policy measures.
ond Schleswig War of 1864, which echoes to 11 Sarrazin’s favored source here is
this day, at least in Danish extreme-right poli- Ralph Ghadban, a creature mostly of the in-
tics. It is said that there were three diplomats ternet despite books to his credit, whose at-
who understood the solution: one commit- tacks on multiculturalism, and specifically its
ted suicide, one went mad, and the last forgot role in producing extended-family criminal
what it was. gangs, has made him a darling of outlets
8 Sarrazin refrains from crass sensation- such as JihadWatch and Breitbart News. His
alism. He does not invoke the small number website is http://www.ghadban.de/de/. As of
of highly-publicized cases of young asylum- As of this writing (June 2019), Clankrim-
seeking males accused or convicted of as- inalität is headline news and Ghadban is
saulting or raping and murdering young forced to live under police protection, like Go-
German women. These are scattered hor- morra author Roberto Salviano in Italy. Also
rors, and the book of good bürgerlich young of interest is Sarrazin’s reference to Tania
German men does not lack for dark pages. Kambouri’s Deutschland im Blaulicht—Notruf
But Sarrazin is inexplicably silent on the sin- einer Polizistin (Pull over, Germany! – Emergency
Call from a Policewoman), Munich and Berlin: Viciously attacked in the press and public fora
Piper, 2015). A volume that received wide by Austrian National Socialists, Bettauer was
media attention, it expressed—from the per- assassinated by a Party member in 1925. He
spective of a policewoman (herself of im- was as prescient in death as in life. In early
migrant background)— far from progressive June 2019, the Hessian Christian Democrat
views on what she regards as the coddling of politician Walter Lübcke, a prominent con-
young Muslim ruffians. servative defender of Angela Merkel’s asy-
12 La République islamique de France? A lum policies, having been vilified for months
review essay on Michel Houellebecq, Soumis- by extreme nationalist social media and in-
sion (Flammarion, 2015). Population and De- ternet sites and his private address having
velopment Review 42(2): 368–75. been published, was gunned down on his
porch by a member of the scene. The al-
13 In Hugo Bettauer’s classic satire Die
leged killer, in custody, has a long extremism-
stadt ohne Juden (Vienna, 1922), as postwar
related criminal record and was a person of
unemployment soars and inflation rages in
interest in the botched NSU investigation.
Vienna, a dimwitted politician comes up with
a solution that takes fire: kick out the Jews. 14 Dale Carnegie, founder of the Ameri-
Once the Jews have been ejected, in scenes can self-help industry (How to Win Friends and
prescient of actual events in 1938, the situa- Influence People, Simon and Schuster 1936),
tion goes from bad to worse, leaving the res- used to smash a bottle of milk during his lec-
idents of Vienna begging them to come back. tures to illustrate the point.
LANDIS MACKELLAR
ALEJANDRO PORTES and ARIEL C. ARMONY, with the collaboration of Bryan Lagae
The Global Edge: Miami in the Twenty-First Century
Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2018. 250 p. $85.00 (Paperback $29.95)
As America moves into high gear for the 2020 presidential election, Florida might
again become as important as it was in the 2000 election. Especially Miami, with its
Hispanics predominantly of Cuban origin, might play a critical role. This extraordi-
nary book relates the ethnic, economic, social, political, and demographic history
of how Miami became a multi-national global city. It was preceded by an equally
insightful volume a quarter of a century ago,15 and by a number of co-authored
papers. The principal author, Alejandro Portes, professor of law and sociology at
the University of Miami and professor emeritus of sociology at Princeton, was pres-
ident of the American Sociological Association in the late 1990s, and is currently
president of the Eastern Sociological Society. Miami’s history has been among his
principal professional interests since the late 1970s.
The book contains nine chapters, each of which examines one of the main facets
of Miami’s history. The main changes and trends stand out. In addition, the author
clarifies complex webs of causes and consequences of these changes and trends, and
portrays the unfolding of events.
Chapter one, “A City in Flux,” describes how northerners wishing to escape
freezing temperatures and southerners fleeing political oppression in their home
countries created a social and economic dynamic unseen anywhere else in the na-
tion and, for that matter, in the world. Yet, up to the 1960s, Miami was a typical
southern US city, with many retirees and veterans, in which most people made a
living by catering to tourism. During the last decades of the twentieth and in the
twenty-first century, Miami became an economic powerhouse. Presently, it is the
best place to do business between Europe, North America, and South America. At
the same time, political power changed hands from the Anglos to the Latinos, pri-
marily to the Cubans.
Chapter two is entitled, “The Demography and Ecology of the City.” It docu-
ments the shift from a two-thirds white to a two-thirds Hispanic population be-
tween 1970 and 2017. Together with a 20 percent Black population, Miami became
an overwhelmingly majority-minority metropolitan area, i.e. the habitually minor-
ity population became the majority. Miami grew from 1.3 million in 1970 to more
than double, 2.7 million in 2017. Growth, fueled mostly by immigration from the
north and from Cuba, was incredibly rapid in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with
annual growth rates of 6.4, 3.0, and 2.5 percent, respectively. Over half of Miami’s
population is foreign born, making it the only metropolitan area in the US to have
a majority immigrant population. Individual municipalities are characterized to a
large extent by ethnicity and social class. Hialeah, for instance, is predominantly
Latino/Cuban working-class, while Coral Gables is home to the upwardly mobile
exiles, many of them also of Cuban origin. African Americans are concentrated in
municipalities such as Miami Gardens with many upwardly mobile individuals, and
Opa-locka has a mostly poor population. While heavily Hispanicized at present, Mi-
ami Beach retains a visible Jewish heritage with many synagogues.
In chapter three, “Between Transience and Attachment,” the authors struggle
to determine which of the two traits is stronger. Compared to any other major
US city, transience visibly permeates Miami. This is not surprising as immigrant
waves from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Colombia, Venezuela, and, more recently, from
Europe, Russia, India, and even East Asia have been arriving one after another
during the short, half-century period. These immigrants established national
municipalities in which most of them have put down roots, even though living
conditions might be far from satisfactory. Status on the wealth-poverty continuum
is also important. The more affluent entrepreneurs tend to be less attached and more
transient.
Chapter four is entitled, “The Economic Surge.” Miami has become one of the
most important hubs of economic activities in the United States. The Cuban Castro
revolution triggered this process. It brought about the exodus of wealthy and ed-
ucated upper- and middle-classes, who could not return to Cuba, settled in Miami,
and built a strong local economy which subsequently attracted business from the
South and the North. The ubiquitous use of Spanish attracted monetary and human
capital from South America. Miami became not only a major hub of the eastern
US economy, but effectively the economic center of the Southern hemisphere.
Another decisive development in reinforcing Miami’s economic clout is that it was
the principal location for drug trafficking. The value of the drug trade in the 1980s,
mostly involving Colombia, was estimated at $10 billion, four times the value of
legal trade between Florida and South America. Not all the proceeds could be re-
turned to Colombia thus a considerable amount was laundered and invested locally.
Miami’s development as an international financial center was stimulated, as well.
In chapter five, “Crime and Victimization in Miami,” it is revealed that Miami is
no exception to the rule that all types of crime are inherent attributes of city life af-
fecting all population strata. Violence is pervasive in poor neighborhoods, the infor-
mal economy is flourishing, and property crimes —such as robbery, auto theft, pick
pocketing and purse snatching—are common. Nonetheless, it is white-collar crimes
involving huge sums—fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering—that constitute
the core of the Miami crime scene.
Chapter six, entitled “A Bifurcated Enclave,” fails to provide a clear picture of
its contents—only a hint. The initial Castro revolution immigrants of the 1960s and
1970s and their offspring became economically and politically powerful. Because of
their fierce anticommunism, they were natural allies of the American establishment
and benefited from its economic and ideological support (which they returned
at the ballot box). However, the Mariel and post-Mariel immigrants of the1980s,
who grew up under the communist regime, had lower average levels of education
and occupational skills. The majority were economic migrants, while a minority
arrived straight from jails and mental hospitals and thus stigmatized this exodus.
The older immigrants distanced themselves from them and did not provide any
support or guidance. Thus, the Cuban expatriate population became two distinct
communities.
Chapter 7, “Miami through Latin American Eyes,” illustrates the wide vari-
ety of meanings the city has for Latin Americans. How does Miami live in their
minds? Some of these meanings have been discussed in previous chapters, such
as a refuge for the persecuted, a trade and financial crossroads, and a depository
of capital. For many, Miami represents a setting of countless opportunities and a
vehicle to enhance one’s wealth and social status in a safe environment not to
be found in Latin America. Thus, owning a second home in Miami represents a
noteworthy accomplishment. Nonetheless, inherent features of contemporary cap-

italist societies stand out in Miami: economic and social inequality, where afflu-
ent classes and low-income populations providing services for those classes share
a common urban space. Miami personifies the hemispheric paradigm of inequal-
ity, political intolerance, and the excesses of capitalism. On the political scene, it
has provided a haven for defenders of democracy and personal freedoms, and, at
the same time, it is also Latin America’s most important outpost of anti-Left ideol-
ogy. It is seen as the cradle of antirevolutionary and anti-reformist movements. Yet,
Miami is also appreciated as a center of art with illustrations of world–class archi-
tecture and outstanding museums. As such, Miami is by some compared to Paris or
London.
Chapter 8, “The Ethnic Mosaic and the Power Elite,” summarizes what has been
reported on this topic throughout the book. The wealthier strata are comprised
mostly of native Anglos, Cubans, Jews, and Europeans, including Russians, who
also tend to be at the apex of the power structure. The poorer and less powerful
range from African Americans, Haitians, various Latino nationalities, Jamaicans,
to other Central American nationals. A reductionist but more or less realistic
assessment is that Cubans run the politics in Miami while Jews largely direct the
economy.
The future of Miami is discussed in the last, ninth, chapter, Driving into the
Flood. Dealing arguably with the most important contemporary policy issue—
climate change—it concludes that the future appears grim. The grandeur of con-
temporary Miami will still prevail for a few decades. It is, however, almost in-
evitable that the sea will reclaim southern Florida, at the latest by the end of the
twenty-first century.16 A Netherlands type of rescue operation—building a dike—
is not feasible. The city is built on limestone, a highly porous rock. Even with a
dike, or applying any other technological intervention, the floodwaters would not
come from the Biscayne Bay directly, but percolate up through the limestone. In
the words of the mayor of South Miami, a scientist, “Ultimately, we give up and
leave. This is how the story ends.” Conceivably, global warming could be slowed
in the unlikely event that nations world-wide would unite in a coordinated ef-
fort to radically reform the nature of their economies. Or, an unforeseen, almost
miraculous, technological intervention would have to be devised to prevent Miami’s
disappearance.
This reader did not detect much to criticize. Regrettably however, some ta-
bles suffer from shortcomings, and not all maps are user-friendly. In Table 1, con-
taining data on population growth, 1970–2020, and the ethnic composition of
three main groups in Miami-Dade County—Hispanics, Blacks, and Non-Hispanic
Whites—the amounts for the groups never add up to the totals. Subsequently, this
error is carried over into the percentage distribution. The sum of the groups is al-
ways larger than 100 percent by a few percentage points. Maps 1 and 2, especially
the latter, are difficult to read. The fault can be traced to the original sources from
which the maps were taken. Map 2 illustrating the ethnic and racial composition
of Miami-Dade County could have been significantly improved had the authors
redesigned it.
The central narrative of the 250-page book required about 200 pages. The
remainder contains notes, references, and an index. This ratio represents a
confirmation of the enormous amount of research substantiating the authors’ ac-

counts, judgements, and findings.
TOMAS FREJKA
Notes
1 Alejandro Portes and Alex Stepick, City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami, Univer-
sity of California Press, 1993. 281 p. $85.00 (Paperback $31.95)
2 See Joel E. Cohen. 2019. “Cities and Climate Change: A Review Essay.” Population and
Development Review 45(2): 425–443.
RUBEN ANDERSSON
No Go World: How Fear Is Redrawing Our Maps and Infecting Our Politics
Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019. xv + 337p. $29.95.
Pervasive economic and even physical insecurity are daily conditions of life for
many in the world’s failed and failing states and offer compelling reasons to leave.
Such reasons do not ensure a welcome elsewhere, least of all in affluent Western
countries, nor are they, in the main, qualifying conditions under the 1951 Refugee
Convention. For the West, the press of potential migrants and asylum claimants
seems a looming threat, roiling its politics. In Europe, the response has combined
measures to curtail human trafficking across the Mediterranean with efforts to en-
courage (more bluntly, bribe) the governments of sending and transit countries
to stem the flow. In the United States, massed groups fleeing violence in Central
America face a cumbersome judicial process that will eventually deny most of them
refugee status and demand their return.
The regions of insecurity, especially in North and West Africa, the Horn of Africa,
and western Asia, are the no-go world of Ruben Andersson’s book. Uncontrolled
migration is an immediately tangible concern motivating the West’s interest in these
regions, along with the post-9/11 “war on terror,” with its self-proclaimed mandate
to intervene wherever anarchy and the threat of terrorism are found. Western in-
terference, of course, has long come in the form of development aid, including sup-
port for birth control, and in the residual habits of metropolitan powers still seeking
to shape the societies and economies of former colonies. Mixed in too, despite its
record of failure, is the neoconservative mission to spread the values of democracy
and free markets across benighted areas. These varied interests, in different propor-
tions, underlie Western approaches to the no-go world. The resulting combination
of militarized and humanitarian interventions, at once serious in intent and inef-
fective (often comically clumsy) in execution, is the grist for Andersson’s account.
Andersson is an LSE-trained anthropologist based at Oxford’s Department of
International Development. He has a particular interest in migration and security
issues in southern Europe and the Sahel: an earlier work was Illegality, Inc.: Clandes-
tine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe (2014). He has the anthropologist’s
penchant for fieldwork on foot and one-on-one interactions, though often foiled
in this project by the travel constraints imposed by risk-averse security officials and
by the fine-print of insurance plans. In lieu of his own direct exposure to no-go
areas, he prowls the edges, interviewing an array of civilian and military opera-
tives of relevant international “missions,” intrepid aid workers, assorted oddball ex-
pats, and skeptical local observers—in his words, an ethnography of interveners.
His broader interest is in “systems of intervention, from peacekeeping and aid to
border security and counterterror, and their interlinkages” (261–262).
A recurrent focus of the present study is the conflict in northern Mali that be-
gan in 2012 in the aftermath of the ill-fated NATO incursion into Libya. French
special forces, followed by UN peacekeepers, sought to quell a rag-tag Tuareg in-
surgency. What had been intended as a simple counterterrorism operation, to deal
with “jihadi fighters with Mad Max weaponry” (61), metastasized into a diffuse cam-
paign against a complex array of armed groups of varying ideologies and overlap-
ping territories. (See Lebovich (2019) for a description of the current situation on
the ground.) The activities of the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mis-
sion in Mali (MINUSMA), mostly Western-led but with peacekeeping soldiers from
a range of African countries like Chad and Guinea, are recounted by Andersson with
detached bemusement. Some other interventions he discusses have done more to
create a refugee exodus than to contain one. In Somalia, the US Africa Command
(AFRICOM) backed the 2006 Ethiopian invasion, leading to the emergence of the
Islamist terrorist group al Shabaab. In Afghanistan, the end-game of the US and
NATO presence has the remaining forces confined mostly to a fortified Kabul green
zone, called by some the Kabubble.
Transit countries were quick to see the opportunities for leverage presented
by migrant traffic. Turkey’s role in governing the Aegean crossing to Greece is the
best-known instance. Quantitatively larger challenges for Europe are the migration
routes through the Sahel and Libya. A “prize asset” for Niger, Andersson remarks,
is “the central desert route to Libya,” for both migrants and smugglers (189). He
quotes the country’s foreign minister in 2016: “Niger needs a billion euros to fight
against clandestine migration” and the EU’s announcement, 18 months later, of
just that amount of unspecified economic assistance to Niger. Libya’s Gaddafi had
earlier demanded €5 billion a year for his government to halt the migrant flow,
against the threat that Europe would “turn black”(162–163). In post-Gaddafi Libya
the EU has preferred direct involvement. The European Border Assistance Mis-
sion (EUBAM) to Libya was an EU training effort in “integrated border manage-
ment.” Equipped with little more than rubber stamps amid the country’s spreading
chaos, EUBAM’s operatives are players in a “tragedy and farce” (160–166), moni-
toring the situation from afar. (In North America, the US has chosen threats and aid
cut-offs along with border hardening as migration deterrents—with similarly scant
success.)
Standing back, Andersson discerns a new pattern of response to the emerging
transnational threats of “migration, drugs, and terror” that is reproduced in succes-
sive theaters. In each case, Western actors are perforce drawn in, but pull back from
actual engagement on the ground. They “circle the danger zone while obsessively
peering into the darkness.” In effect, “they foist remoteness on insecure regions”
(52). This mode of intervention by “ambivalent deployment” warrants a distinctive
term: he calls it the Timbuktu syndrome. He sees in it echoes of colonial-era policies
that supported indirect rule in buffer states as shields against the truly wild regions,
but now combined with the “hard” border security of blast walls and bollards.
True to his discipline’s belief in ground-truthing, Andersson has little time for
higher-level theorizing. He disdains both Panglossians like Thomas Friedman and
Parag Khanna and doom-mongers like Robert Kaplan and Robert Kagan. Particu-
larly reviled are the “quack theories” of Thomas Barnett, whose line of separation
between the core globalized areas of the world and the unstable, disconnected “gap”
areas supposedly provided the US defense establishment with its rationale for sus-
tained high levels of post-Cold War spending.
No Go World, as its author acknowledges, is an essay rather than a monograph. It
has digressions, interludes, and extended analogies in which Andersson reflects on
colonial history, maps and mapping, classic children’s tales, Conrad, Kipling, and
Eliot (The Waste Land). The terms he introduces are often striking (“architecture
of risk”), if a bit blurry (“psychogeography of danger,” “geopathology of interven-
tion”). A few are merely regrettable: “dangerization.” Andersson favors a mannered
prose, wearing to this reader though praised in the cover blurbs: “We will soon delve
further into the wider historical mapping of danger, yet for us now let us note how,
in Western capitals, the Sahara and its ancient outpost of Timbuktu have long served
as repositories of murky fears and desires” (50–51). Made complicit in his travels,
we accompany the author as he roams “from Bamako to Kabul and back again.”
An appendix in the book offers an anthropologist’s defense of narrative and
storytelling as against “the harder social sciences, enamored with lining up fact
against affect” (258). Economics and demography, rather than the political futurism
of Khanna or Kagan, are the “hard” social sciences in this context. What do these
disciplines have to offer in the non-narrative realm? Sticking with Africa, much of
the continent is finally showing promise by the standard indices of economic devel-
opment as governments across the region—with well-known exceptions—shape
up. But as incomes rise, so do rates of outmigration, essentially unaffected, per-
haps even increased, by foreign aid. (The evidence was reviewed in this journal by
Clemens and Postel (2018).) Urbanization proceeds apace; the growth poles in both
east and west of the continent draw in workers. Foreign investment in extractive
industries and physical infrastructure (much of it from China) is flowing in. With
good management, the resulting economic thrust will be equaled or surpassed by
the growth of manufacturing and services, already foreshadowed by the spread of
smart-phone-based financial services. Enough, it can be hoped, to meet the forbid-
ding challenges of population growth and climate change.
But what is the future of, say, Mali or Niger? The UN’s demographic predictions
here are ominous: Mali increasing from 20 million in 2020 to 44 million in 2050,
Niger from 24 million to 66—already factoring in a substantial fall in their current
fertility of six to seven lifetime births per woman. And these are fragile, predom-
inantly rural economies, with tiny formal sectors, and subject to the vagaries of a
drying climate and encroaching desert. It is a stretch to imagine them being gradu-
ally drawn into the orbit of a dynamic West Africa, centered on southern Nigeria or
Ghana. (The projections, of course, may mislead. Yemen with a population today
of close to 30 million provides a cautionary tale: seen from 2000, the UN projected
population for Yemen in 2050 was 102 million; seen from 2019, with a bloody civil
war still raging, the 2050 projected total is 48 million.)
Continued migrant pressure on Europe from the South is not in ques-
tion. Andersson’s mild injunction for Western leaders is to “shift attention from
[border] reinforcement toward positive cooperation on mobility with poorer coun-

tries” (p.239). He concedes, in an understatement, that this is likely to be “unpalat-
ably cosmopolitan” in present circumstances. Borders will surely be reinforced, lit-
erally so at the geographic boundaries but also internally, at significant cost to liberal
society, by a more stringent and pervasive monitoring of legal status.
GEOFFREY MCNICOLL
References
Clemens, Michael A., and Hannah M. Postel. 2018. “Deterring emigration with foreign aid:
An overview of evidence from low-income countries.” Population and Development Review
44 (4): 667–693.
Lebovich, Andrew. 2019. Mapping armed groups in Mali and the Sahel. European Council on
Foreign Relations. http://www.ecfr.eu/mena/sahel_mapping.
SHORT REVIEWS
by John Bongaarts, John Casterline, Sonalde Desai, Dennis Hodgson, and Landis MacKellar
IPBES, 2019. Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem
services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services
The debate about global environmental decline has been dominated by the wide-
ranging harm expected from future climate change. Far less discussed, but equally
dangerous, is the accelerating decline of the natural world. The over-exploitation of
soils and seas, the cutting of forests and the pollution of air and water are together
devastating the living world, according to a massive new UN-sponsored report from
the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Ser-
vices (IPBES). The full, 1,500-page report will be published later in 2019 but this
summary for policy makers has just been released. The four sections of the summary
cover the decline in biodiversity and ecosystem services, the accelerating drivers of
this change, the failure to meet many of the goals set for conservation and the very
challenging actions needed to restore sustainability.
The report’s most alarming findings have been widely reported. Of an estimated
8 million animal and plant species (75 percent of which are insects), around 1 mil-
lion are threatened with extinction—more than ever before in human history. Over
40 percent of amphibian species, almost 33 percent of corals, and more than a third
of all marine mammals are threatened. At least 680 vertebrate species have been
driven to extinction. All this is largely the result of human actions. Three-quarters of
the land-based environment and about 66 percent of the marine environment have
been significantly altered by man. More than a third of the world’s land surface and
nearly 75 percent of freshwater resources are now devoted to crop or livestock pro-
duction. A third of marine fish stocks are being harvested at unsustainable levels.
In sum, the biosphere is being altered at an unprecedented scale and pace.
The dominant driver of these adverse trends is humanity’s rapidly growing need
for food, energy, water, and materials. The value of agricultural crops has increased
by 300 percent since 1970, raw timber harvest has risen by 45 percent and approxi-
mately 60 billion tons of renewable and nonrenewable resources are now extracted
globally every year—twice the level estimated for 1980. Land degradation has re-
duced the productivity of 23 percent of the global land surface. Climate change will
accelerate many of these adverse effects over coming decades. The summary con-
cludes with an enumeration of dozens of actions that can be taken by governments,
researchers, and individuals, such as practicing informed government, improving
documentation of nature, promoting sustainable agricultural practices, and reduc-
ing food waste.
The report is authoritative and rich in scientific content based on meticulous re-
search conducted by hundreds of scientists. But the text is also densely written, and
its major sections consist largely of dozens of separate numbered paragraphs with
only a weak overall story line. Readers of PDR may well be disappointed that the
role population growth (which is clearly one of the most important indirect drivers
of the loss of nature) is barely mentioned and the long list of proposed remedial
actions does not mention population policies at all. —J.B.
TRENT MACNAMARA
Birth Control and American Modernity: A History of Popular Ideas
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 318 p. $39.99.
Today Americans take for granted that they have the right to determine if to have
children and how many children to have. But when did birth control come to be
seen as the right of each American? MacNamara, an historian at Texas A & M Uni-
versity, doesn’t begin his narrative in the 1910s with the birth control movement of
Margaret Sanger and her allies. Americans, he notes, had half the number of babies
in 1900 than they had in 1800. Birth control, which he defines as “any deliber-
ate effort to prevent unwanted childbearing” including abstinence and abortion,
was taking place behind more and more closed doors throughout the nineteenth
century. Legislators might have pass laws declaring contraception to be obscene
and abortion a crime but restricting access to “folk” and low-tech methods of birth
control was largely beyond their power. A mass movement, without clear leaders,
was taking place in the intimate spaces where each couple was deciding their own
reproductive destiny.
Legitimacy, seeing something as being right and proper, is a normative concept
that ultimately has more to it than a simple behavioral component. Was what was
taking place in all those bedrooms sin or sanity? When did a consensus develop
that birth control and small families were right and proper choices for couples?
In chapters 2 through 6, MacNamara examines varied sources to chronicle this
transformation of birth control from a questionable activity to a legitimate activity
in an era before polling. Chapters 2 and 3 contrast the content of hundreds of
articles from nine major newspapers dealing with topics such as “birth control,”
“birth rate,” “race suicide,” and “contraception” during two periods: 1903–1908
and 1927–1935. Articles from the first period, when President Theodore Roosevelt
was calling American couples’ move to small families “race suicide,” mostly agreed
with the President’s pessimistic assessment. Articles from the later period contained
more pro-birth control articles than pronatalist ones, generally depicting “modern”
couples, ones more educated than their parents, as “naturally” choosing small
families. Chapters 4 and 5 examine documents arising from the formal birth
control movement of Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett: this includes 556
letters requesting help that were sent to them from 1918 to 1936, and the logs from
Dr. James Cooper’s 280 public presentations on birth control that he gave before
general audiences and doctors’ groups between 1925 and 1927 while employed
by Sanger. The letter writers overwhelmingly wanted more effective birth control
to improve their economic condition and their health, expressing little interest in
the formal movement’s quest for legal reforms. Dr. Cooper’s logs reported that his
audiences largely had already accepted the legitimacy of birth control and wel-
comed the opportunity to have a “scientific” open discussion of the topic. Chapter 6
reports on the response to a 1927 national radio address in which Denver Juvenile
Court Judge Ben Lindsey, the head of Denver’s juvenile court, advocated that
couples initially enter into a “companionate marriage” that included birth control,
no children, and a no-fault divorce option. The 15,000-watt Denver radio station
KOA’s (“Klear Over America”) request for comments drew 258 letters from across
26 states. Although many respondents did express moral outrage at his suggestion
a surprising number found it a pragmatic response to modern conditions.
Histories of the birth control movement in American have most often focused
on Margaret Sanger’s determined struggle for women to gain legal access to contra-
ceptives. MacNamara’s history is of a much more amorphous movement that took
generations to coalesce. Birth control began as a pragmatic response to changed
conditions. In the early decades of the twentieth century, it gained legitimacy as
popular ideas identified it as an essential component of modern life. In a 22-page
Epilogue—that students of population will appreciate for its comprehensive cov-
erage of the demographic literature—MacNamara reflects on the twenty-first cen-
tury’s birth control question: what happens after it becomes an individual right?
More specifically, will liberal societies be able to survive the reproductive choices of
their citizens? —D.H.
GYAN PRAKASH
Emergency Chronicles: Indira Gandhi and India’s Turning Point
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. 439 pp. Index.
It is not possible to do justice to this rich and thoughtful book on the Indian State
of Emergency (June 1975–March 1977) in a short review. But the critic can discuss
what the author, a professor of history at Princeton, contributes to our understand-
ing of the mass sterilization campaign—implemented chiefly through vasectomy for
surgical convenience—of those fateful 21 months. For those who do not recall the
broader outlines the Emergency, over 100,000 persons were jailed, judicial review
was suspended, freedom of the press was curtailed, and historically precious urban
neighborhoods were razed for “beautification” purposes. Democratic, constitutional
India hung in the balance.
Many view the Emergency sterilization campaign as an anomaly in a benign

history of voluntary family planning in India. Prakash persuasively argues that
it was not. The international population control movement (he uses Matthew
Connelly’s term) had seduced the Indian elite long before the mid-1970s. Even
Mahatma Gandhi approved of the goal of reducing births (as did his influential asso-
ciate and personal physician Sushila Nayyar), although his insistence on abstinence
did not waver after Margaret Sanger met him in the 1930s to promote birth control.
By the 1960s, what is now often (and certainly by critics such as Prakash) viewed
as the familiar cast of international villains—the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Population Council, the UN Population Division, the World Bank,
the Princeton Office of Population Research—was advising Indian policy makers
and technocrats on how to cut the birth rate, and expressing concern about how
slowly it was all moving. India became, in effect, a vast laboratory for Western-
financed research experiments of the “What works?” variety. To give an idea of
the scale, in the mid-1960s, Ford had 72 international professionals in its Delhi of-
fice, 177 national technical and administrative staff, and 16 international advisors
embedded in relevant institutions. And the villains were by no means exclusively
international, nor were their agents mere subaltern mediocrities. Eminent demog-
rapher Sripati Chandrasekhar, whom Indira Gandhi appointed Union Health Min-
ister in 1967, advocated (unsuccessfully) for mandatory sterilization of men after
their third child was born. The First (1951–1958), Second (1956–1961), and Third
(1961–1966) Five-Year Plans successively ramped up funding for family planning.
Prakash recounts the consequences when the population control and steriliza-
tion agenda, by then one, came under the purview of Sanjay Gandhi, endowed
with broad extra-constitutional powers and irrepressible energy. He was “a doer,
not a thinker,” as his mother is said to have described him. Targets were set, lackeys
competed to surpass them, and mobile medical teams were remorselessly deployed.
In 1966, Indian population controllers had already crossed a Rubicon when they
accepted international partners’ advice to adopt financial incentives for steriliza-
tion and IUD insertions. These incentives, in Prakash’s view, are no more than raw
coercion in the Indian context of poverty and precarious dependence on the rains.
But the defining characteristic of the Emergency was widespread punitive sanctions
for over-reproducing or rejecting sterilization—civil servants’ pay was docked, pro-
motions were denied, and access to maternal and medical care was restricted. State
budget allocations were cut for poor performance against sterilization targets. There
were scattered, violent reprisals against recalcitrant villagers. And everywhere, the
naked expression of biopower—the district health officer arriving in the village with
a sound rig and field clinic, the pep talk from the district magistrate, local officials
rounding up “volunteers,” etc.—was evident. Many of these tendencies, Prakash
argues, antedated the Emergency; which only accentuated them as Sanjay and his
minions, as the author puts it, “ran amok.”
Some half century later, the abuses carried out under the Indian Emergency still
haunt global population policy. The US Reagan Administration’s stance at the 1984
Mexico City International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was
not only about abortion; it was, as well, a liberal objection to any sort of tinkering
with population to achieve economic objectives. Whether the Emergency influ-
enced US delegation Deputy Chair and chief negotiator Alan Keyes can be debated;
he was a simple right-to-life man—although it is intriguing that his first State De-
partment posting was to the US Consulate in Mumbai in 1979, when India was in
full post-Emergency convulsion.
But, it is not to be doubted that revulsion against the Emergency rocked the
1994 Cairo ICPD, which converted the entire population and development agenda
to a (largely women’s) sexual and reproductive rights one—which it remains, with
the predictable political, cultural, and religious debates about what these rights are
and who the duty bearers are. This is all sharpened by the strong gender dimension
with the accompanying power imbalances. The result is a stalemate: while many
clamor for action to curb population growth, the aid establishment will not touch
it unless the response can be fit into the Cairo policy box. Hence, population size,
rate of growth, and structure are absent in any meaningful way from the Sustain-
able Development Goals (SDGs). It is striking that incoming European Commission
President Ursula von der Leyen, having identified demographic change as one of
the four key challenges facing Europe, proceeded to reduce it to immigration (see
the Documents section of this issue).
This is a sweeping and powerful book, far broader than the population control
aspects of the Emergency discussed here. The writer makes no secret of his progres-
sive political views. Their advocacy in no way blunts his analytical edge or calls into
question his authority. —L.MacK.
RICHARD TOGMAN
Nationalizing Sex: Fertility, Fear, and Power
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. 285 p.
This volume contains an interpretive synopsis of the population policies of national

governments from the seventeenth century to the present. Separate chapters de-
scribe population policy in seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe, nineteenth
century Europe, Europe during the first half of the twentieth century, the devel-
oping world in the period between 1945 and 1980, the developing world in the
period 1980 to the present, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the post-WWII
period, and finally Europe and North America from 1980 to the present. The broad
historical and geographic sweep sets this volume apart from most other past reviews
of the population policies of nation states. The author selects five countries for ex-
tended treatment as case studies, each one considered in multiple historical periods
(i.e. multiple chapters): China, France, Germany, India, and Russia. To provide a
framework for evaluating population policies, the author identifies five “natalist
discourses”: mercantilist, Malthusian, modernization, neo-mercantilist, and laissez-
faire. These discourses range from strongly pro-natalist (mercantilist) to strongly
anti-natalist (Malthusian). The author concludes that population policies typically
are ineffective (and therefore wasteful), for the simple reason that reproductive
age women and men resist the programs that implement the policies. This applies
equally to, for example, the anti-natalist efforts in developing countries in the post-
WWII decades and the pro-natalist efforts of European countries in recent decades.
(The author does not cite prominent empirical evidence on the demographic impact
of population policies and programs, including evidence published in this journal.)
Exceptions to this generalization are the few instances of coercive programs insti-
tuted by strong states, most notably China’s One Child Policy. The author wrestles
with the puzzle of why ineffective population policies have been pursued in so
many times and places. His explanation is that attachment to one or more of the
“natalist discourses” has led to the mistaken belief that altering population growth
rates will facilitate the attainment of political power and/or economic growth.
Notes. Bibliography. Index. —J.C.
FREDERICK F. WHERRY, KRISTIN S. SEEFELDT, and ANTHONY ALVAREZ

Credit Where It’s Due
New York: Russell Sage, 2019. 159 p.
It is hard to imagine life in the contemporary United States without a credit score.
Renting an apartment, buying a car on installment, and often even finding a job
requires a credit score. A higher credit score results in credit at more favorable terms;
a borrower with poor credit score may pay as much as extra $70,000 over the life of
a home mortgage of $100,000. We assume that most people have a credit score and
individuals who have a low credit score have made some poor decisions in their life
by not paying their credit card bills or other loans on time.
Wherry and his colleagues present startling statistics. They show that an esti-
mated 45 million adults in the United States lacked a credit score in 2010—either
because they had no credit history or they had too few credit lines to be scored.
The burden of being credit invisible fell most harshly on Blacks and Latinx adults
(28 percent in both cases) compared to whites and Asians (16–17 percent).
“Giving Credit Where Credit is due,” a mantra of modern credit justice activists,
requires consensus on who deserves it and why. Should credit, like political free-
dom, be a fundamental right for all adults? Or is credit a privilege best granted to
those who have demonstrated themselves fit to use it, or at least disciplined enough
not to abuse it? Authors of Credit Where It’s Due, Frederick Wherry, Professor of So-
ciology at Princeton; Kristin Seefeldt, Associate Professor of Social Work and Social
Policy at University of Michigan; and Anthony Alvarez, Assistant Professor of So-
ciology at California State University, Fullerton, argue that low credit score is part
and parcel of a life lived on the margins of the organized financial world and not a
function of conscious individual choices.
The book is based on fieldwork conducted at Mission Asset Fund (MAF) which
began as a nonprofit community organization in 2007 in the Mission District of
San Francisco and seeks to enhance financial inclusion for minorities, immigrants,
and low-income households and to create a fair credit marketplace for everyone. It
documents financial trajectories that land individuals in a credit invisible situation
where they are unable to obtain credit on fair terms and traces their struggle to get
out of this predicament.
While the authors’ diagnosis of what lands individuals in a credit bind is fas-
cinating, highlighting poor starting points, diverse family and life demands, and
student debt as prime culprits, it is the focus on solutions that is most interesting.
Authors suggest several solutions for addressing the credit conundrum.
They argue that Blacks and Latinx will never be able to catch up to their white
counterparts simply by working at the same jobs, engaging in the same saving
and investment practices, or getting the same education. Historical evidence shows
that whites inherit over ten times as much wealth as their minority counterparts
which allows them to build a credit history. The only way to bridge this gap is to
consciously establish an investment account for every child born to a family with
less than median income. This account will provide seed capital for their future
financial security. They also propose short-term loans for every family that would
protect families from getting into exorbitantly priced emergency or “payday” loans.
This is to be supplemented by extending safety regulations and financial education
to students taking college loans to ensure they do not fall into default. Although the
focus is on low income Americans, some of the ideas in the book and solutions have
interesting synergies with recent discussions on financial inclusion in the economic
development literature.
The premise of the book is challenging and pulls it in two different directions.
On the one hand, it seeks to be an academic manuscript, trying to find a niche in the
broader discourse on credit and financial stability. On the other hand, its value and
impact come from its close link with one specific NGO focusing on equalizing the
credit landscape. It is a challenging task to blend the two in creating a cohesive nar-
rative and at times the authors struggle with it. However, the compelling storyline
of the book allows readers to ignore this tension and remain engaged throughout
the reading. —S.D.

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