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Eugenics past, present and future
No full textUnderstanding the human – a form of moral and religious introspection and historical responsibility and a quest for
scientific knowledge and adaptability to technological progress ‘Crafting humans’ – and its corollary human enhancement – is a contested topic, both in medical sciences and the humanities. With continuing advances
in science and technology, scientists and the general public alike are aware that the basic foundations of the
human condition are now at stake. This volume contributes to this growing body of work. It offers insights into some of the reflections and imaginaries that have inspired and legitimated both theoretical and practical programmes
for ‘crafting’ humans, ranging from the religious/spiritualist and the philosophical/cultural to the secular and the scientific/scientistic; from the
religious and mystical quest for human perfection to the biopolitical eugenic state of the twentieth century, and
current theories of human enhancement. This volume discusses
these topics in a synchronized way, as interrelated variants of the most central story in history, that of human
perfectibilit
BLOOD AND HOMELAND: EUGENICS AND RACIAL NATIONALISM IN CENTRAL AND SOUTHEAST EUROPE, 1900-1940
No full textAcknowledgments -- List of contributors -- Introduction -- Eugenics, race and nation in central and southeast Europe, 1900-1940: a historiographic overview / Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling -- Pt. I. Ethnography and racial anthropology -- German "race psychology" and its implementation in central Europe: Egon von Eickstedt and Rudolf Hippius / Egbert Klautke -- From "prisoner of war studies" to proof of paternity: racial anthropologists and the measuring of "others" in Austria / Margit Berner -- Volksdeutsche and racial anthropology in interwar Vienna: the "Marienfeld Project" / Maria Teschler-Nicola -- Of "Yugoslav barbarians" and Croatian gentlemen scholars: nationalist ideology and racial anthropology in interwar Yugoslavia / Rory Yeomans -- Anthropological discourse and eugenics in interwar Greece / Sevasti Trubeta -- Pt. II. Eugenics and racial hygiene in national contexts -- Eugenics, social genetics and racial hygiene: plans for the scientific regulation of human heredity in the Czech lands, 1900-1925 / Michal Simunek -- Progressivism and eugenic thinking in Poland, 1905-1939 / Magdalena Gawin -- The first debates on eugenics in Hungary, 1910-1918 / Marius Turda -- Taking care of the national body: eugenic visions in interwar Bulgaria, 1905-1940 / Christain Promitzer -- The self-perception of a small nation: the reception of eugenics in interwar Estonia / Ken Kalling -- Central Europe confronts German racial hygiene: Friedrich Hertz, Hugo Iltis and Ignaz Zollschan as critics of racial hygiene / Paul J. Weindling -- Pt. III. Religion, public health and population policies -- "Moses als Eugeniker"? The reception of eugenic ideas in Jewish medical circles in interwar Poland / Kamila Uzarczyk -- Eugenics and Catholicism in interwar Austria / Monika Löscher -- From welfare to selection: Vienna's public health office and the implementation of racial hygiene policies under the Nazi regime / Herwig Czech -- Fallen women and necessary evils: eugenic representations of prostitution in interwar Romania / Maria Bucur -- Pt. IV. Anti-semitism, nationalism and biopolitics -- Culturalist nationalism and anti-semitism in Fin-de-Siècle Romania / Razvan Pârâianu -- The politics of hatred: scapegoating in interwar Hungary / Attila Pók -- Racial politics and biomedical totalitarianism in interwar Europe / Aristotle A. Kallis -- Tunnel visions and mysterious trees: modernist projects of national and racial regeneration, 1880-1939 / Roger Griffin -- Inde
Clerical agency and the politics of scriptural translation: the 'canonisation' of the Gagauz language in southern Bessarabia
No full textFrom Prevention to Protection: Policy, Practice and Pitfalls of Surgical Sterilization in California, 1910–Present
Full text linkIn the history of involuntary sterilization in the United States, California stands out. Under
the Asexualization Act (1909), a law which permitted the surgical sterilization of certain
“defectives,” over 20,000 developmentally disabled and mentally ill people were forcibly
sterilized. Although legal changes in 1951 all but halted the practice, the issue of the use
and misuse of sterilization did not disappear. Subsequent policies concerning voluntary
contraceptive sterilization (1969), and the sterilization of the developmentally disabled
(1980), saw flagrant abuses of reproductive freedom capture public and political attention
in the state. Traditionally, scholarly accounts advancing ideological justifications for how
and why involuntary sterilization occurred in California have dominated the
historiography. This dissertation contends, however, that this intellectual-cultural approach
fails to fully explain the complexities of how legislation was developed and practiced.
Instead, this dissertation explores the process through which eugenics, population control,
racism, sexism, and other similar ideas, found expression through political, legal, and
clinical institutions. By examining the inner workings of these various state and sub-state
institutions, the dissertation develops a more nuanced approach, highlighting the continuities and discontinuities in the way that these ideas were incorporated into policy
aims; and how policy, in turn, was translated into sterilization practice at the institutional
level. In doing so, this dissertation presents novel findings about both the functional
development and practice of sterilization in California, as well as extending the temporal
focus traditionally applied to the state's history of sterilization policy. In particular,
important new contributions about disability and the practice of sterilization by substitute
consent in the 1970s and 1980s are presented. These findings are directly connected to
important ongoing debates about the legacies of eugenics, reproductive technologies and
practices, the reproductive rights of the developmentally disabled, and the limits of state
intervention in reproductive matters
HEALTH, HYGIENE AND EUGENICS IN SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE TO 1945
No full textAcknowledgements -- Introduction -- Framing issues of health, hygiene and eugenics in Southeastern Europe / Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta, Marius Turda -- Pt. I. German eugenic paradigms -- Racial expertise and German eugenic strategies for Southeastern Europe / Paul Weindling -- Pt. II. Hygiene and health politics -- Orientalizing disease. Austro-Hungarian policies of 'race,' gender and hygiene in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1874-1914 / Brigitte Fuchs -- Typhus, Turks, and Roma: hygiene and ethnic difference in Bulgaria, 1912-1944 / Christian Promitzer -- Health policy and private care: malaria sanitization in early Twentieth Century Greece / Katerina Gardikas -- Combating infant mortality in Bulgaria: welfare activities, national propaganda, and the establishment of pediatrics, 1900-1940 / Kristina Popova -- Politics, modernization and public health in Greece: the case of occupational health, 1900-1940 / Leda Papastefanaki -- "Like yeast in fermentation": public health in interwar Yugoslavia / eljko Dugac -- Pt. III. Eugenics and reproduction -- Marital health and eugenics in Bulgaria, 1878-1940 / Gergana Mircheva -- Eugenic birth control and prenuptial health certification in interwar Greece / Sevasti Trubeta -- Eugenics and puericulture: medical attempts to improve the biological capital in interwar Greece / Vassiliki Theodorou and Despina Karakatsani -- Controlling the national body: ideas of racial purification in Romania, 1918-1944 / Marius Turda -- The eugenic fortress: Alfred Csallner and the Saxon eugenic discourse in interwar Romania / Tudor Georgescu -- Fighting the white plague: demography and abortion in the Independent State of Croatia / Rory Yeomans -- Pt. IV. New research agendas -- Remapping the historiography of modernization and state-building in Southeastern Europe through health, hygiene and eugenics / Maria Bucur -- Contributors -- Inde
The Word of Science: Popularising Darwinism in Romania, 1859-1918
Full text linkThis dissertation explores the popularisation of Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in
Romania from 1859 to 1918. Placing Darwinism in the Romanian context is important in several
ways, as not only gives a picture of the interconnectedness between the political and the
scientific construction of knowledge, but also reveals how cultural hegemony was formed in the
European periphery. The research traces the multidirectionality of scientific ideas, highlighting
its top-down and bottom up character. It focuses on the social staging of Darwinism, materially
and culturally (in printed texts and institutions), politically (in ideological contests and
outcomes), and scientifically (in epistemological negotiations). Finally, it explores the
relationship between these historical agents.
Special attention is given to science popularisation journals, pamphlets, manuals of natural
history and museum artefacts in Romania, which addressed the evolutionary theory and its role
for the adoption of the biological perspective in studies of ecology. To this end, the dissertation
provides a detailed analysis of the social context in which scientific institutions and associations
operated, exploring how Romanian naturalists acquired scientific authority, while deciding
which scientific theories circulated in the public sphere. At the same time, the dissertation
highlights how Darwinism was intertwined with ideas of racial, social and gender inequalities.
Drawing on relevant comparisons with other countries, it reveals the development of a
scientific public in Romania at the end of the nineteenth century, and the role played by
popular knowledge and counterpublics in scientific debates
MODERNISM AND EUGENICS
No full textSeries preface -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: context and methodology -- 1. The pathos of science, 1870-1914 -- 2. War: the world s only hygiene, 1914-1918 -- 3. Eugenic technologies of national improvement, 1918-1933 -- 4. Eugenics and biopolitics, 1933-1940 -- Conclusion: towards an epistemology of eugenic knowledge -- Notes -- Select bibliography -- Inde
Unity in diversity: Latin eugenic narrative in Europe, c. 1910s-1930s
Full text linkThis article discusses the development of Latin eugenics in Europe between 1910s and 1930s, with a special focus on France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Romania. During this period, Latin eugenics offered a progressive programme of social and medical reform, alongside pronatalist campaigns to educate the population about the importance of large and healthy families. Latin eugenics was premised on a number of theories and ideas developed since the early 1900s, particularly in France and Italy, including "puériculture" and biotypology, and on its opposition to birth control, compulsory sterilization and Nazi racism. Considering the current revival in eugenic studies across Europe and elsewhere it is important to engage with other eugenic traditions than the ones recurrently invoked in the scholarship. The history of Latin eugenics in Europe provides a much needed revision of conventional interpretations of eugenics that focused predominantly on Anglo-American and German experiences
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