Susan's Day 7 Summary: Population, Resources, and the Ideology of Science (Harvey)

Some Highlights:

· HARVEY argues: Different methods used in approaching the population-resource relationship generate different kinds of conclusions. It is important to adopt a method that is integrally related to the result. Harvey advocates for an ethnical approach to the population and resources relationship. Science has attempted to understand the population-resource connection however science is considered by Harvey as unethical because it is ideological. Ideology is hidden by the assumption that science has ethical neutrality. The problem with this is that, because of its supposed ethical neutrality, science is used to legitimate and further the interests of a select group of people. Harvey contends: “scientific enquiry takes place in a social setting, expresses social ideas, and conveys social meanings” (p.257). For example, logical empiricism is a scientific method that could be used to suit a social purpose. The class character of scientific endeavor is invisible. Science plays a role in the politics of repression used by the ruling elite.

· MARX argues: According to Marx, both Ricardo and Malthus projected ideological assumptions in their ‘scientific’ approaches to the relationship between population and resources.

What is Harvey trying to do in using Malthus, Ricardo and Marx in a paper about population, resources and the ideology of science?

· He is trying to illustrate how the supposedly neutral scientific approaches of Malthus and Ricardo used in theorizing the relationship between population and resources are ideological. The population-resource science of Malthus and Ricardo supports capitalist class interests and Harvey is interested in arguing how this is the case. Harvey uses Marx to make his argument. How does Harvey go about making this argument? He starts with Marx’s ontology.

· Marx’s ontology is relational. How is this significant to Harvey’s argument? Marx’s view is that relationships within a totality are significant. Within the social totality, Marx identifies various structures, one of which being the economic basis of society that comprises of both the forces of production and the social relations of production. This is significant because the economic basis makes explicit the relationship between natural and social aspects of life. [Is Harvey saying that the economic basis in society blurs the lines between what is ‘natural’ versus what is ‘man-made?]

· Human beings are part of nature bit also social and capable of creating forms of social organization that can become self-regulating and self-transforming. Important to recognize is that “society creates its own history by transforming itself, but in the process the relationship with nature is also transformed” (p. 266)

· Marx argued that capitalism allows human beings to create nature, rather than alter it. Capitalism allows humans to transform concepts and categories dialectically, thereby changing the nature of the system from within.

· Marx’s methodology is similar to constructivism advanced by Piaget: humans can transform human-selves by transforming the world through constructing structures. This can happen because, in Marx’s view, the subject and object are not independent entities, unlike empiricism in which the opposite is true.

Marx’s method, which includes some degree of constructivism, helped Marx talk about how poverty is not a naturally occurring phenomenon.

What is the relationship between the argument posed in this article and the degree to which Harvey is a social constructionist?

Constructivism is part of Marx’s way of seeing the world and is a way of producing new categories and concepts of new knowledge and understandings. New categories and concepts mediate the relationships between the natural and social system.

Social constructivism appears to be one approach to escaping ideology through a change that occurs as an internally generated necessity effecting thought and material realities

Also:

Needs are socially and culturally determined

Scarcities experienced are not naturally occurring but are created by human activity and managed by social organization

“Ideas are social relations; they have their ultimate origin in the social concerns of mankind and have their ultimate impact upon the social life of mankind” (p. 275)