Abstract
As stated up front, this work is dedicated to defining the ABC’s of global society or globalization as a system of interconnected and interdependent structures and processes as they affect people and their communities everywhere. With that in mind, it makes sense to start our discussion with global population trends, as they have shaped and reshaped human societies over the millennia and are likely to do so throughout time. Details about these trends and variations are well known.1 Repeating them would simply be redundant. At the same time, no study focusing on the interdependence of various facets of globalization can ignore reflecting on the key population parameters and to point out some of their lesser appreciated dimensions. For example, it may not always be fully appreciated that the world population today constitutes a mutually inclusive continuous subsystem of a larger system with far-reaching implications for our planet in that any significant change in one geographic region sooner or later would reflect not only on populations but also on social, economic, and political dynamics in other regions as well. Population trends have always been major factors in triggering social change in communities and societies. Now they have acquired global dimensions with far-reaching implications for the planetary environment, resources, conflicts, cooperation, and national social and economic well-being.
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Notes
See, for example, Scott Sernau, Global Problems: The Search for Equity, Peace, and Sustainability (Boston: Pearson [Allyn and Bacon], 2006), part three, chapter 10.
UN Population Division, Long Range Population Projections: Based on 1998 Revision (New York: UN Population Division, 2000).
Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968);
Gordon Conway, The Doubly Green Revolution and Food for All in the Twenty-First Century (Ithaca. NY: Comstock Publications. 1998).
The Green Revolution is not without critics who consider it an unmitigated disaster for local agriculture, environments, and small farmers; see, for example, Vandana Shiva, The Violence of Green Revolution: Third World Agriculture, Ecology, and Politics (London: Atlantic Highlands, 1991).
Donella Meadows, Jorgan Randers, and Dennis Meadows, The Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publications, 2004).
See, for example, Mihajlo Mesorovic and Eduard Pastel, Mankind at the Turning Point: The Second Report to the Club of Rome (New York: Dutton, 1974);
Ervin Laszlo et al., Goals for Mankind (New York: Dutton, 1977).
Aqueil Ahmad, “Preferable and Probable Future Goals in India,” in Goals in a Global Community, Vol. 3, The International Values and Goals Studies, ed. E. Laszlo and J. Bierman (New York: Pergamon Press, 1978).
Total fertility rate (TFR) refers to the average number of children a woman is expected to have during her lifetime. For this data, see Brady E. Hamilton, Paul D. Sutton, and Stephanie J. Ventura, “Revised Birth and Fertility Rates for the 1990s and New Rates for Hispanic Population,” National Vital Statistics Report 51, no. 12 (August 2003): 1–94.
For further discussion on the evolution of national population policies, see John May, World Population Policies: Their Origin, Evolution, and Impact (New York: Springer, 2012).
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See Scott Sernau, Global Problems: The Search for Equity, Peace, and Sustainability (New York: Pearson Education, 2006), chapter 10.
See, for reference, John C. Caldwell, Demographic Transition Theory (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006).
For further details on the demographic transition theory and general global and regional population trends, see David Newman, Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006), chapter 13—“The Global Dynamics of Population: Demographics Trends”; US Bureau of the Census, US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, 2005.
Carin Zissis, “India’s Muslim Population,” Backgrounder, June 22, 2007.
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See Aqueil Ahmad, “Gain-Drain Ratio in the Global Exchange of Scientific and Technical Manpower,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 5 (July 1970): 215–22.
Quoted from Nancy Jackson, “A Walk through Historic Paris,” Saudi Aramco World, July/August 2012, 18.
See also Ian Coller, Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798–1831 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).
Georges Lemaitre and Cecile Thoreau, “Estimating the Foreign Born Population on a Current Basis” (Paris: OECD, 2006).
Peter Wonacott, “Indian Scientists Return Home as Economy Improves,” Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2012.
John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moses, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).
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Robert E. Scott and David Ratner, “NAFTA”s Cautionary Tale,” Economic Policy Institute, Washington, DC, July 20, 2005, Issue Brief #214.
Migration Policy Institute, Mexican Immigrants to the US: The Latest Estimates (Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute, 2004).
Public Policy Institute of California, “Just the Facts: Immigrants in California,” June 2008, http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/itf/JTFImmigrantsJTF.pd£
Giovanni Peri, Immigrants’ Complementarities and Native Wages: Evidence from California (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2007).
For a comprehensive account of rural-urban migration in China, see Lin Fei, “Rural-Urban Migration in China: Recent Trends and Future Challenges” (paper presented at the International Conference on Contemporary China Studies, Economic Institute of Anhui Academy of Social Sciences, People’s Republic of China, January 5–7, 2007), http://www.hku.hk/china/full_papers/4C-3.pdf.
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Ferdinand Tonnies, Community & Society—Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).
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Ahmad, A. (2013). Global Population and Demographic Trends. In: New Age Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319494_3
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