ABSTRACT
The conjunctural specificity of the population crisis in the context of an international strategy of containment was an important determining factor in how the United States came to occupy a position of leadership in the worlding of Malthus. This chapter examines the problematization of Third World population growth in and through the international strategy of containment. It explores how the United States came to occupy a position of leadership in world politics and how this leadership contributed to the problematization of the power of population in the "periphery." The chapter shows how the containment-population nexus was domesticated in order to solve the social problems associated with increased urbanization in the United States. It focuses on how the population dynamics associated with the "racial ghetto" were problematized as a threat to social order and how this problematization contributed to the instantiation of the population apparatus in the United States.
