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The prospects for reductions in birth rates in the less industrialized countries are improving owing to the increas ingly favorable climate of opinion relating to birth control, the invention of better contraceptives, and the adoption of national family planning programs. Some twenty-three countries, in cluding over half the population in the developing countries, now have such programs. These are too new to have had a measurable effect on the birth rate in most countries. Never theless, the birth rate is already falling in a few of the eco nomically more progressive countries in East Asia such as Taiwan, Korea, and Singapore. These reductions in the birth rate may be expected to deepen and spread, accelerated by national family programs operating within the context of rapid socioeconomic change. In two decades the solutions to the world population problem may well be in sight, though not yet fully achieved. But these changes will not occur fast enough to forestall massive population growth and continuing critical problems of population at least through the next decade.

The prospects for reductions in birth rates in the less industr'ized countries are improving owing to the increasingly favorable climate of opinion relating to birth control, the invention of better contraceptives, & the adoption of nat'l FP programs. Some 23 countries, including over 50% of the pop in the developing countries, now have such programs. These are too new to have had a measurable effect on the birth rate in most countries. Nevertheless, the birth rate is already falling in a few of the econ'ly more progressive countries in East Asia such as Taiwan, Korea, & Singapore. These reductions in the birth rates may be expected to deepen & spread, accelerated by nat'l fam programs operating within the context of rapid SE change. In 2 decades the solutions to the world pop problem may well be in sight, though not yet fully achieved. But these changes will not occur fast enough to forestall massive pop growth & continuing critical problems of pop at least through the next decade. HA.

The aim of this article is straightforward: to present two clarifications of Hannah- Arendt's seasoned political concept of natality and to conclude by positioning this new account of natality within the context of the climate crisis. In many ways, this concluding section, where natality is read as a form of historical emancipation, hinges on the degree to which I succeed in reframing existing conversations around natality. In the first instance I submit an 'earthly reading' of natality before turning to discuss the historical implications of this 're-earthed' natality as enacting a form of weak messianism akin to that of Walter Benjamin. Rethinking natality in this way, I present an account of Arendt's work as always already inclined towards the issues brought to light in the climate crisis. And so, while the forms of emancipation and redemption that I locate in natality may already be commonly read in natal actions, which break spontaneously into the world and recall the originality of appearance, I nevertheless contend that its political implications reach new grounds with the revisions that I offer in the body of my article. By way of conclusion, I join critical Anthropocene theorists in contending with the 'slow violence', 'willed racial blindness' and 'crises of the imagination' that the climate crisis elicits. This is the setting that sits behind my intervention into natality and, in turn, it is this setting that I suggest can be illuminated through the weak messianism of a 're-earthed' natality. Arguing for Arendt's latent consideration of the earth, I hope to expose the ruined fragments of the past that shape the present crisis and gesture towards their radical redemption. If I succeed in showing that natality can be used as a resource to rethink both the prehistory and the present of the climate crisis then I will have achieved a reorientation in thinking about Arendt's politics. Which is merely to say that I will have revealed concerns for the earth as intrinsic to natal actions and, in turn, their appearance as messianic disruptions on the earth. Prompted by the need to think critically about the historical appearance of the climate crisis whilst retaining, at the same time, the injunction to think expansively about future action – that is, as not determined exclusively by the violence of the climate crisis – this article defends a reconsideration of natality as a form of critical historical intervention. Formulating this reconstruction is then 'operationalised' in the concluding section where I invoke its revolutionary force in remapping the history of the climate crisis.

Controlling natality—the ratio of births to the general population—is one of the best means a state has to control its demographic composition. However, the fact that the state has certain interests with regard to the size and composition of its population does not necessarily give it the right to set and pursue natality policies, because such policies can potentially infringe on various human rights such as the rights of women and the rights of minorities. Using a feminist perspective I first argue that even if it is illegitimate for states to try to influence people's choice as to the number of their children in order to achieve demographic change, the state may, and should, enact natality policies aimed at promoting women's right to equality, regardless of whether their end result is to achieve a demographic change. Next I examine whether states are allowed to pursue natality policies aimed at decreasing natality rates in specific cultural groups, whose cultural precepts are oppressive toward women and dictate very high natality rates. Using the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel as a test case, I present and reject three objections to the state's right to pursue such natality policies: the objection from free choice, the objection from free association, and the objection from culture. Rejecting these objections I conclude that not only is the state allowed, but it is indeed obligated, to pursue natality policies that aim to alleviate the oppression of women by decreasing inordinately high birth rates in illiberal communities. However, when choosing the measures for the implementation of such policies the state must take care to choose only measures that respect human rights.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Foreword -- Preface to the English Edition -- Translator's Preface -- Table of Contents -- Part I: Preliminary Considerations -- 1: Subject Matter and Sources of Data -- Population Census -- The Census as Portrait of the Population -- The Census as History of the Population -- By-Products of the Population Census -- Population Changes -- Natality -- Mortality -- Extension of the Field of Study and of the Sources -- Demographic Inquiries -- Sample Surveys -- Parish Registers -- Published Sources of Demographic Statistics -- French Demographic Statistics -- American and British Demographic Statistics -- International Demographic Statistics -- Demographic Knowledge and Statistical Information -- 2: Location in Time -- Geometric Representation of Time Instants and Time Intervals -- A Terminological Convention -- Introduction to the Lexis Diagram -- The Lexis Grid -- Generation or Cohort Life Lines -- Ages and Cohorts -- Double Classification in Demography -- General Remarks -- 3: Rates in Demography -- Crude Rates -- Computation of Crude Rates -- Specific Rates -- Rates by Age -- Rates by Age Groups -- Specific Fertility Rates -- General Fertility Rates -- Age-Specific Fertility Rates -- Age-Specific Marriage Rates -- Limitations of Age-Specific Rates -- Rates by Birth Cohort -- Rates by Birth Cohort Groups -- Choice of Rates -- American and British Statistics -- Quotients and Probabilities -- Infant Mortality Rates -- Methods of Computing the Infant Mortality Rate -- Conversion of Rates to an Annual Basis -- General Considerations and Suggestions -- Part II: Vital Events -- 4: Analysis of Vital Events -- Demography as the Science of Rates -- Rates and Their Limits -- Quotients and Tables -- Period Observations and Cohort Observations -- Hypothetical Cohorts -- Study of Real Cohorts.

The concepts of nature and nation are both rooted in the notion of birth. Thus both can be conceived anew if the underlying vision of natality is conceptualized, following Hannah Arendt, not as a set of inexorable biological processes, but as the fundamental human capacity for political action. This reconceptualization of natality allows proposing an alternative to the prevalent commonsensical ethno-nationalist definitions of nation-hood, and also allows a view of the realm of nature itself as inherently political. Arendt's theory finds an interesting referential point in modern developments in biotechnology that threaten to undermine the `naturalness' of existing notions of ethnically conceived nations. Similarly, nature might be revealed to have a polis working at the very heart of what seemed to be a set of inexorable processes, independent from human beings.

In its explicit engagement with the possibility of human extinction, the Anthropocene thesis might be seen as signalling a 'crisis of natality'. Engaging with two works of fiction – Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces – the article explores the embodied, affective and intimate dimensions of the struggle to sustain life under catastrophic conditions. Though centred on male protagonists, both novels offer insights into a 'stratigraphic time' associated primarily with maternal responsibility – involving a temporal give-and-take that passes between generations and across thresholds in the Earth itself. If this is a construction of inter-corporeality in which each life and every breath has utmost value, it is also a vision that exceeds the biopolitical prioritization of the organismic body – as evidenced in both McCarthy's and Michaels' gesturing beyond the bounds of the living to a forceful, sensate and enigmatic cosmos.