ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 provides an overview of how to think about population as culturally manufactured idea. While the scholarship of demography provides useful measurements of population forecasts that are important for good governance, the circulation of population as an idea has enormous bearing on how people forge identities in relation to each other and in the context of finding ways to belong. The chapter explores how increasing global mobility affects population as a concept, and how perennial media questions over population size, composition and belonging inform social identities and ethics. An overview of the following nine chapters in this book is provided.
