Conditions Of Knowledge: How Population Cybernetics Gains Authority

Through a comparative analysis of the 1950s and the 1970s discourses of population contr ol, this study explores what kind of social factors affect the formation of knowledge authority. In contemporary Chinese history, the same knowledge about population control was confronte d with different evaluations of the academic community in the 1950s and the 1970s. In a soc ial constructivist perspective, this study assumes that the consequence did not come from the properties of knowledge itself, but from the social factors. This view leads me to develop wh at I call "knowledge-production/consumption-model," which refers to five steps from knowledg e production to knowledge consumption. The core elements of the five steps are:opportunity structure, the professions of knowledge-producers, the situation of research materials and facili ties, the chances of publication, the status of academic conferences or research groups, the ra nge of academic community, the symbolic meanings of knowledge-producers, and the strategie s of representation. The first six elements are regarded as material conditions, and the last tw o elements belong to symbolic conditions.?contend that the 1970s discourse of population control took advantage of one or two the se elements, which the 1950s discourse did not. Analyzing which elements the 1950s and the 1970s discourse of population control respecrively took advantage of, this study tries to expl ain the mechanism of the formation of knowledge authority.The second chapter of the dissertation explores the symbolic meanings of "population of China" and "population control" in the early 1950s, and presents an interpretation of "the birt h planning" policy that the Chinese government proposed. "Population control" basically repre sented a cluster of negative symbols or signs in the early 1950s, but as the Chinese governm ent created the term "birth planning", the idea of "population control" was divided into two d ifferent clusters of symbols, "birth control" and "birth planning". While the former was symb olically associated with capitalism or imperialism, the latter was associated with socialism.The third chapter discusses the failure of the 1950s discourse of population control. First of all, the 1950s discourse of population control was divided into optimistic and pessimistic v iews. While the optimistic view reflected the symbolic structure of "birth planning", the pessi mistic view attached to the symbolic structure of "population of China" some negative implic ations such as "too much", "consumption", and "financial burden of government." Then I disc uss the material and symbolic conditions from which the pessimistic view emerged. On the o ne hand, the producers of the pessimistic view had relatively rich material resources, but on t he other hand, they had poor symbolic resources. The symbols and signs they used as strateg y of representation, contrary to their expectation, were inconsistent with what were shared by the members of the academic community in the 1950s China, and they also lacked credibilit y. This problem resulted in the failure of the 1950s population control discourse. In the last part of the chapter, I discuss how the issue of population became "the forbidden zone" amon g the members of the academic community after the 1950s. The emergence of "Ma Yinchu", the symbolic figure who signified the failure of the 1950s population control discourse, made the members of the academic community reluctant to discuss the issue of population, and de graded the value of knowledge about population.In the fourth chapter, I investigate the material and symbolic conditions upon which the e mergence of the 1970s discourse of population control depended. "The group of Renmin Univ ersity", who entered into "the forbidden zone" for the first time since the failure of the 1950 s discourse of population control, was supported by the Chinese government, and the socialist discourse of population was the first research project that the members of the group underto ok in the 1970s. Not until they found Marxist grounds for population control were they able to develop a new symbolic structure of "population control". In particular, "two kinds of prod uction (liangzhongshengchan)",one of the phrases the members of the academic community p referred to quote in the 1970s, removed the sharp contrast between "birth control" and "birth planning." "The qijibu group," which improved the authority of knowledge about population in the early 1980s, boasted of richness of material and symbolic resources.This study contends that the biggest difference between the 1950s and the 1970s discourse s of population control lies in the symbolic conditions, strategies of representation and the cre dibility of knowledge-producers. In particular, those who produced knowledge about population control in the 1950s failed to make use of socialist symbolism in order to acquire the autho rity of knowledge, but the intellectuals in the 1970s successfully used such symbolism.