In On Infertile Ground, Jade S. Sasser explores how a small network of international development actors, including private donors, NGO program managers, scientists, and youth advocates is bringing population back to the center of public environmental debate. With an increasing focus on climate change coming to dominate news media and international development circles, population advocates have harnessed an opportunity to reframe population growth as an urgent source of climate crisis, and a unique opportunity to support women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) via funding inter ... More

In On Infertile Ground, Jade S. Sasser explores how a small network of international development actors, including private donors, NGO program managers, scientists, and youth advocates is bringing population back to the center of public environmental debate. With an increasing focus on climate change coming to dominate news media and international development circles, population advocates have harnessed an opportunity to reframe population growth as an urgent source of climate crisis, and a unique opportunity to support women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) via funding international family planning policy. Making Sexual Stewards follows the network through a diverse range of sites—from Silicon Valley foundation headquarters to youth advocacy trainings, the halls of Congress and an international climate change conference—to investigate how the new population advocacy is constructed and circulated, while drawing on longstanding development narratives linking population growth to environmental scarcity and geopolitical instability. Sasser argues that this advocacy revolves around framing the sexual steward: a neoliberal development subject sitting at the nexus of discourses linking scientific knowledge production, creative donor advocacy, and youthful advocacy focused on global social justice.