Population Science and the Making of China's One-Child-Per-Couple Policy, 1975-2000

人口科学与中国一对夫妇独生子女政策的制定，1975-2000加州大学欧文分校的苏珊·格林哈尔格现代科学技术的发展对中国后毛时代的经济和全球崛起起到了至关重要的作用。中国科学的重要政治层面已经得到了研究，但科学研究中的关键问题--特别是科学知识是如何创造的，以及科学如何塑造公共政策和社会--在很大程度上仍未在中国背景下得到探索。中国在1979年至1980年推出的备受争议的一对夫妇只生一个孩子的政策，为科学对政策和社会的影响提供了一个引人注目的案例。在美国，无论是学术还是大众思想，都将这一政策与中国的(压制性)政治联系在一起，而不是与其(薄弱的)科学联系在一起。然而，对中国内部人士的采访表明，在幕后，中国人口科学家大量借鉴西方科学(尤其是20世纪70年代的限制增长模型)，在独生子女政策的制定(以及后来的取消)中发挥了关键作用。如今，这一角色仍然笼罩在神秘之中。这个项目试图打开“中国人口科学”这个黑匣子，看看它的核心概念“人口危机”和独生子女政策是如何构建的，它们是如何在25年来演变的，以及它们如何产生非凡的政治和社会影响。该项目认真对待社会科学中的“科学”，利用科学研究、数学史和政府研究，以科学研究的方法研究人口科学(或人口学)及其在人口管理中的作用。该办法力求使“人口”一词成为问题，展示“人口”如何被积极地构成科学和治理的一个领域，以及“危机”等“人口问题”及其“最佳政策解决办法”是如何由在具有重大影响的政治和文化背景下运作的处于历史背景中的行为者以人的方式构建的。这个项目是第一个在非西方背景下对人口科学及其与人口管理的联系进行理论化的项目。中国的工作应该强调人口科学未被赏识的力量，并阐明我们如何看待人类科学的利害关系。该项目包括采访有影响力的中国科学家和政策制定者(以及精选的外国学者和实践者)；参观政策试点项目；以及对人口科学和政策制定的历史进行档案研究。在非营利性研究机构人口理事会担任人类学家和政策分析师的十年里，PI在中国人口和政策制定界建立了一个庞大的人脉，获得了广泛的专业词汇，并获得了“中国的朋友”的美誉。这种对中国人口领域的熟悉，有助于缓解获得受访者和材料的问题。

Proposal AbstractSES 0217508Population Science and the Making of China's One-Child-Per-Couple Policy, 1975-2000Susan Greenhalgh, University of California-IrvineThe development of modern science and technology has played a crucial part in China's post-Mao economic and global ascent. Important political dimensions of Chinese science have been studied, but key issues in science studies--in particular, how scientific knowledge is created, and how science shapes public policy and society--remain largely unexplored in the Chinese context. China's controversial one-child-per-couple policy, introduced in 1979-80, provides a striking case of the impact of science on policy and society. In the U.S., both scholarly and popular thinking associates the policy with China's (repressive) politics, not its (weak) science. Yet interviews with Chinese insiders suggest that, behind the scenes, Chinese population scientists, borrowing heavily from western science (especially the limits- to- growth models of the 1970s), played a critical role in the making (and later unmaking) of the one-child policy. Today that role remains shrouded in mystery. This project seeks to open the black box, "Chinese population science" to see how its central notions of "population crisis" and the one-child policy as "the only solution" were constructed, how they evolved over 25 years, and how they produced their extraordinary political and social effects. Taking seriously the "science" in the social sciences, the project draws on science studies, histories of numbers, and governmentality studies to develop a science studies approach to population science (or demography) and its role in population governance. The approach seeks to problematize the term "population" by showing how "population" is actively constituted as a domain of science and governance, and how "population problems" such as "crises" and their "optimal policy solutions" are humanly constructed by historically situated actors operating in highly consequential political and cultural contexts. This project is the first to theorize the science of population and its connections to population governance in a non-Western context. The China work should underscore the unappreciated power of population science and make clear the stakes involved in how we view the human sciences.The project involves interviewing influential Chinese scientists and policymakers (as well as selected foreign scholars and practitioners); visiting policy pilot projects; and conducting archival research on the history of population science- and policy-making. During ten years as anthropologist and policy analyst at the Population Council , a nonprofit research organization, the PI built up a large personal network in Chinese demographic and policymaking circles, acquired an extensive specialist vocabulary, and gained a reputation as a "friend of China." This familiarity with China's population field helps ease problems of access to interviewees and material.