Virginia Deane Abernethy's Books

The Vanishing American Dream

Immigration, Population, Debt, Scarcity

By: Virginia Deane Abernethy

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The Vanishing American Dream

Immigration, Population, Debt, Scarcity

By: Virginia Deane Abernethy

The United States has gone off track, allowing domestic and foreign aid policies to be co-opted by a government—abetted by mass media—that serves special interests rather than the greater national good. Americans' tendencies to trust, play fair, and help have been abused and require replacement by a realistic outlook. The Vanishing American Dream posits solutions to get America back on the right track. Abernethy sees population growth driven by mass immigration as a major cause of economic and cultural changes that have been detrimental to most Americans. The environment has been degraded by over-crowding and increasing demands on natural resources. Work is cheapened by explosive growth in the labour force creating a buyer's market. One salary or wage no longer supports a family and educates children. Women working outside the home is a necessity, not a choice, for most American families. Furthermore, feminism, aimed originally at balanced gender roles, has been turned viciously against males of all ages and ultimately against females through degrading their traditional and valuable contributions. Abernethy proposes that Americans need time to regroup, untroubled by a continuing influx of foreign peoples. The family, small business, and responsive local government are centres around which a solvent and confident citizenry can prosper again.

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Page Count

306

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351295500

ISBN 13

9781351295505

Population Pressure and Cultural Adjustment

By: Virginia Deane Abernethy

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Population Pressure and Cultural Adjustment

By: Virginia Deane Abernethy

Integrating research from anthropology, biology, and history, this provocative, brilliant book proposes a theory of demographic equilibrium. The author's hypothesis is that human beings, like many other species, are able to adjust their population numbers to the carrying capacity of the environment. Abernethy points out that in response to perception of scarcity or abundance of resources, culturally mediated values, beliefs and behavioral patterns are modified in ways that can either raise or lower rates of population growth. Abernethy in this way moves beyond the ideological debates that have sundered the field of policy and population. In real world time and space, cultural adjustments that balance population and resources are made over a long stretch in relatively stable or known environments. These adjustments also operate in processes that involve technological advances that appear to increase carrying capacity, and these usually act to support and underwrite population growth in any given area. In her new introduction to this first paperback edition, Abernethy shows how many of the cultural changes the book predicted in 1979 have come to pass. She details a complex of behaviors that favor single life-styles or small family size that have contributed to low fertility rates among native-born Americans while fertility rates among immigrants continue to climb. Population Pressure and Cultural Adjustment is not simply a theoretical slogan, but discusses a rich set of different cultural situations where this homeostatic process has been disrupted or aborted. Often, disruption occurs after the infusion of foreign value systems as well as new forms of technological innovation, or when highly permeable social boundaries result in the importation of resources for which the limits and consequences are not fully appreciated by the host population. This work will inevitably be controversial because of its implications for the limits as well as the potential of public policy in both advanced and underdeveloped societies.

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Page Count

227

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

135129878X

ISBN 13

9781351298780

The Vanishing American Dream

Immigration, Population, Debt, Scarcity

By: Virginia Deane Abernethy

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The Vanishing American Dream

Immigration, Population, Debt, Scarcity

By: Virginia Deane Abernethy

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Page Count

306

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1351295500

ISBN 13

9781351295505

Population Politics

The Choices That Shape Our Future

By: Virginia Abernethy,Garrett Hardin

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Population Politics

The Choices That Shape Our Future

By: Virginia Abernethy,Garrett Hardin

International efforts to regulate fertility rates so that populations do not grow beyond the earth's capacity have included technical assistance and capital; improved health care conditions to lower the risk of infant mortality; increased opportunities to develop literacy; the democratization of governments; and several decades of liberal immigration and refugee policies favoring third world nations. The persistence of high fertility despite international efforts confounds demographers. 'Population Politics' brilliantly dissects the paradigm responsible for the counterproductive efforts of nations and international agencies. Abernethy, a renowned anthropologist, shows why policies hamper the shift to lower fertility. Ireland, Indonesia, Cuba, China, Turkey and Egypt are but a few of the countries Abernethy examines, showing how economic, sociocultural, and agricultural factors that have caused population growth can be harnessed to stabilize population size. 'Population Politics' is a provocative examination of the influence of aid and liberal immigration policies on world population growth, and often counterproductive to the role of the United States as an industrial power. This volume's uniquely interdisciplinary perspective will enlighten the lay reader, as well as demographers and epidemiologists, conservationists, reproduction and family specialists, agricultural economists, and public health personnel. Virginia D. Abernethy is professor emeritus of psychiatry (anthropology) at Vanderbilt Medical School and was for 11 years the editor of the scholarly journal 'Population and Environment. Garrett Hardin is emeritus professor of human ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences and the University of California, Santa Barbara.

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