Main description:

Winner of the Cantemir Prize of the Berendel Foundation

Eugenic thought and practice swept the world from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in a remarkable transnational phenomenon. Eugenics informed social and scientific policy across the political spectrum, from liberal welfare measures in emerging social-democratic states to feminist ambitions for birth control, from public health campaigns to totalitarian dreams of the "perfectibility of man." This book dispels for uninitiated readers the automatic and apparently exclusive link
between eugenics and the Holocaust. It is the first world history of eugenics and an indispensable core text for both teaching and research. Eugenics has accumulated generations of interest as experts attempted to connect biology, human capacity, and policy. In the past and the present, eugenics speaks
to questions of race, class, gender and sex, evolution, governance, nationalism, disability, and the social implications of science. In the current climate, in which the human genome project, stem cell research, and new reproductive technologies have proven so controversial, the history of eugenics has much to teach us about the relationship between scientific research, technology, and human ethical decision-making.

Contents:

Contributors ; Abbreviations ; Introduction ; Eugenics and the modern world ; Philippa Levine and Alison Bashford ; Part One: Transnational themes in the history of eugenics ; 1. The Darwinian context: Evolution and inheritance ; Diane B. Paul and James Moore ; 2. Anthropology, colonialism, and eugenics ; Philippa Levine ; 3. Race, science, and eugenics in the twentieth century ; Marius Turda ; 4. Eugenics and the science of genetics ; Nils Roll-Hansen ; 5. Fertility control: Eugenics, neo-Malthusianism, and feminism ; Susanne Klausen and Alison Bashford ; 6. Disability, psychiatry, and eugenics ; Mathew Thomson ; 7. Eugenics and the state: Policy-making in comparative perspective ; Veronique Mottier ; 8. Internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and eugenics ; Alison Bashford ; 9. Gender and sexuality: A global tour and compass ; Alexandra Minna Stern ; 10. Eugenics and genocide ; A. Dirk Moses and Dan Stone ; Part Two: National/colonial formations ; 11. Eugenics in Britain: The view from the metropole ; Lucy Bland and Lesley Hall ; 12. South Asia's eugenic past ; Sarah Hodges ; 13. Eugenics in Australia and New Zealand: Laboratories of racial science ; Stephen Garton ; 14. Eugenics in China and Hong Kong: Nationalism and colonialism, 1890s-1940s ; Yuehtsen Juliette Chung ; 15. Eugenics in South Africa: Paradoxes in the place of race? ; Saul Dubow ; 16. Eugenics in colonial Kenya ; Chloe Campbell ; 17. Eugenics in post-colonial Southeast Asia ; Sunil S. Amrith ; 18. German eugenics and the wider world: Beyond the racial state ; Paul Weindling ; 19. Eugenics in France and the colonies ; Richard S. Fogarty and Michael A. Osborne ; 20. Eugenics in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies ; Hans Pols ; 21. The Scandinavian states: Reformed eugenics applied ; Mattias Tyden ; 22. The first-wave eugenic revolution in southern Europe: Science sans frontieres ; Maria Sophia Quine ; 23. Eugenics in eastern Europe, 1870s-1945 ; Maria Bucur ; 24. Eugenics in Russia and the Soviet Union ; Nikolai Krementsov ; 25. Eugenics in Japan: Sanguinous repair ; Jennifer Robertson ; 26. Eugenics in interwar Iran ; Cyrus Schayegh ; 27. Eugenics and the Jews ; Raphael Falk ; 28. Eugenics policy and practice in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Mexico ; Patience A. Schell ; 29. The path of eugenics in Brazil: Dilemmas of miscegenation ; Gilberto Hochman, Nisia Trindade Lima, and Marcos Chor Maio ; 30. Eugenics in the United States ; Wendy Kline ; 31. Eugenics in Canada: A chequered history, 1850s - 1990s ; Carolyn Strange and Jennifer A. Stephen ; Epilogue: Where did eugenics go? ; Alison Bashford ; Chronology ; Index