Population-conflict models: blaming the poor for poverty

International security is increasingly concerned with environmentally-induced regional conflicts. The standard approach to this field posits population growth as the primary cause of environmental scarcity and/or degradation, which then results in violence. This paper seeks to demonstrate how a limited focus on population growth per se disguises the violence that is inherent within the unequal distribution of social resources. The focus on population growth thus ends in blaming the poorest of the earth's citizens for environmental scarcity. We draw on the agent/structure debate on violence in addition to ecofeminist and feminist critiques of the population-conflict models to draw attention to how the dominant culture maintains and normalizes the violence of social domination. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.