History Of Eugenics Research Articles

The datafied hand in our health

AbstractThis article looks at a smart ring as a window into how contemporary datafication in fitness and medical wearables is informed by the longer history of notions of fitness and the datafication of health within the practice of medicine. After introducing some of the concerns arising from the history of eugenics, specifically out of disability studies critiques, and the more recent organizing of health through data‐driven algorithmic medicine, as well as discussing the difference between non‐optional wearables and their use as part of transhumanism, I briefly consider how wearables could be a site of intervention, to seize rather than relinquish power over our datafied bodies.

Mapping the postwar legacies of eugenics in socialist countries: a conceptual history of eugenics in Hungary

The paper aims to understand the various legacies of eugenics in the postwar period to recognize both the continuities and discontinuities of eugenics with an approach which is both conceptually sound and historically correct. Building on earlier work of Lene Koch, the paper endeavours to chart the historical trajectory of eugenics by examining how its definition and those of its related or oppositional concepts have evolved within selected lexicon entries across various stages of the century. The inclusion and publication of a concept within a lexicon indicate its significance, linguistic vitality, and prevalence in public discourse. These entries serve as a window into the contemporary understanding and application of concepts over an entire century, offering insights into the practices of eugenics as interpreted by the authoritative scholars of the era. Additionally, these lexicon entries offer more than just a mirror to the past’s prevailing attitudes. The very act of articulating a concept may be viewed as a pivotal element in social struggles, influencing the course of eugenic practices and their interpretations. Both conceptual history and discourse analysis share common ground in their perception of concepts, considering the use of language as a social activity endowed with performative capabilities. They recognize that language does not merely reflect reality but can actively shape it, playing a significant role in societal dynamics and power relations. The Hungarian lexicon entries on eugenics reveal notable disparities in the identified content, the periodization, and the evolution of changes when compared to Lene Koch’s earlier study on Scandinavian eugenics. In Hungary, the concept of eugenics underwent significant changes over four successive periods. The history and interpretation of eugenics can vary significantly from one country to another. Different nations have had their unique experiences and trajectories with the eugenics movement, which have been shaped by their specific cultural, political, and social contexts. These variations emphasize the importance of considering the localized and historical perspectives when examining the concept of eugenics.

Abnormal in Alberta: The Genealogy of “Severely Normal” as a Biopolitical Dog Whistle

The phrase “severely normal” was often used by Premier Ralph Klein in 1990s’ Alberta to describe the Albertans he wished to interpellate, and it has had enduring power as a dog whistle by the political right in the province. Against commentators who see it as only a facile populist gesture, in this article the author deploys Foucault’s lectures on “racism against the abnormal,” together with Ladelle McWhorter’s interpretation, to argue that there is a historical and conceptual continuity to “severely normal” that ties back to Alberta’s infamous eugenic history. Articulating this genealogy enables the connection of political struggles on the part of sexual minorities, disabled people, members of non-normative families, and Indigenous people and illuminates the biopolitical rhetoric of successive Conservative governments.

"At a Glance:" The Role of Diagrammatic Representations in Eugenics Appropriations of the "Infamous Juke Family".

The case of the Juke family is one of the most notable episodes of the history of eugenics in the USA. The Jukes were initially brought to the fore in the 1870s by a famous investigation that aimed at estimating the interplay of heredity and environment in determining the problems of poverty and crime. This inquiry triggered a harsh confrontation between two polar interpretations of the study, an "environmentalist" one and a "hereditarian" one. It was with the later reassessment of the case made by the Eugenics American Office (ERO) in the 1910s that the controversy was considered closed with the victory of the eugenicists' hereditarian stance. As a result, the family was made a living proof of the alleged hereditary nature of crime and pauperism and a case study in support of the eugenicists' plea for the sterilization of people deemed the bearers of hereditary defectiveness. In this article, I explore the role played by pedigrees and other diagrammatic representations in the eugenicists' appropriation of the meaning of the case of the Juke family and the role played by this appropriation in asserting the superiority of the ERO's method of work over rival approaches.

History of Eugenics in Otorhinolaryngology: Ernst Rüdin and the International Eugenics Network.

Introduction The early geneticist and psychiatrist Ernst Rüdin (1874-1952) became one of the key figures in the eugenics movement and in the German health system of the Nazi era. His connections in the international eugenics network have played an important role in the history of eugenics. Objective To discuss the connections between Ernst Rüdin's scientific group in Munich and Otmar von Verschuer's group in Frankfurt during the Nazi era. Methods Otorhinolaryngological materials from Ernst Rüdin's former private library are presented, and they show Rüdin's deep involvement in the international eugenics network. These materials provide insights into early medical genetics in otorhinolaryngology. Results One result of the present study is that eugenics groups from Munich, Frankfurt, and New York certainly influenced one another in the field of otorhinolaryngology. Karlheinz Idelberger and Josef Mengele were two scientists who performed hereditary research on orofacial clefts. Later, Mengele became deeply involved in Nazi medical crimes. His former work on orofacial clefts clearly had, to some extent, an influence on subsequent studies. Conclusion An international eugenics network already existed before 1933. However, it becomes clear that the weaknesses of many early genetic studies did not enable its authors to draw firm scientific conclusions, suggesting that scientists lacked an accurate concept of the genetic causes of most illnesses.

Modifying Our Genes: Theology, Science and “Playing God”

Modifying Our Genes: Theology, Science and “Playing God”

Colonialism, eugenics and ‘race’ in Central and Eastern Europe

The legacies of eugenics in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and their connections to global colonialism remain uncharted. Therefore, it is worth pondering over this relationship, which requires a historical perspective and a repositioning of the recent postcolonial ‘turn’ in CEE to include the history of eugenics. For the most part of the 20th century, eugenics took shape within both colonial and nation-building projects. Eugenic strategies devised to preserve the colonial system outside Europe have always coexisted with programmes designed to improve the well-being of nations within Europe. This convergence between colonial, racial and national dimensions of eugenics requires a critical rethought. While this key line of inquiry has been a major focus in Western Europe and the US, it remains under-theorised in CEE. By highlighting the colonial implications of nation-building in the region, we attempt to destabilise the all-too-pervasive historiographic misconception that CEE nations are largely untouched by the global circulation of eugenics and scientific racism.

The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile

Sarah Walsh's original history of intellectual elites, science, health, and white supremacy in Chile covers the associations between eugenics, the idea of race, women, and Catholicism in the early twentieth century. The Religion of Life: Eugenics, Race, and Catholicism in Chile is Walsh's first book and examines social constructions from the previously unexplored angle of science, medicine, and religion. The last, as the author illustrates, converges with eugenics within secular approaches, the majority of which address the “harmonious relationship” between science and religion and the notion of race as a biological categorization (p. 51). In a period in which the social question emerged and flourished, modernization, urbanization, and the tensions of modern life overlapped with disputes concerning political power voiced by the traditional sectors, with increasing input from secular groups. Here, the traditional charity of the Catholic Church and Christianism began to be seen as an inefficient strategy that merely made problems tolerable, while the scientific methods involved in social work were seen as outstandingly efficient in creating eugenic fitness. Catholic and secular Chilean intellectuals agreed on gender differences and the homogeneity of race. On the latter, the imaginary of mestizaje as a route of progress predominated. The book shows how, following the separation of church and state in 1925, the strength and influence of Catholics in Chile endured throughout the remainder of the twentieth century through eugenics. Walsh exposes how the local Catholic eugenic narrative supported positive eugenics and perpetuated the primary role of women in preserving racial health.The book explores how the imaginary of the “Chilean race” is both visualized and shaped through exclusion, a point exemplified by the work of Nicolás Palacios. The elimination of the local Indigenous peoples and the narrative of their amalgamation into a single homogeneous local race served as a point of commonality, perpetuating the myth of mestizaje across the field. Although mestizaje was also present in Brazil and Mexico, in Chile as a racial ideology it fit with ideas of national racial supremacy over other countries in the region based on the myth of the Araucanians.The Religion of Life is well founded on primary sources—namely, articles in local publications, newspapers, medical journals, and monographs from throughout the period. Walsh connects the local eugenics scene with a worldwide network of knowledge production from which developed the imprecise ties between environment, heredity, and eugenic fitness that allowed Catholic intellectuals to find a niche within the field of eugenics. The book's introduction clearly locates the field both globally and regionally, establishing the origins of eugenics in Latin America as the “synthesis of neo-Lamarckism and Darwinism” (p. 7). The book is then divided into six chapters. The first three deal with Catholicism and eugenics as intellectual frameworks that converge and interact, while the last three focus on the role of eugenics literature in the early twentieth-century emergence of racial thinking. Although repetitive at times, the book is well grounded in the history of eugenics, although it could have better contextualized this within local history. Walsh concludes by proposing a connection between Salvador Allende and Augusto Pinochet based on a shared cultural context and privileged background. However, this assertion is somewhat forced and arguably inaccurate, as Pinochet belonged to neither an intellectual elite nor a cultural aristocracy, as evidenced in a variety of research. Although certain military figures were connected with such elites, Pinochet held a lower rank than such figures, and the infantry branch to which he belonged was less well thought of among the various bodies of the armed forces. If he did indeed succeed in climbing the social ladder, this was due to his marriage to Lucía Hiriart, whose family had a richer cultural background. The fact that he was not well received initially by Hiriart's family reinforces Pinochet's nonelite background.Walsh's contribution would have been strengthened by more profound reflection on gender, social class, and the patriarchy through theory that extends the human sciences framework. Nevertheless, the book valuably explores the global, regional, and local history of eugenics and Catholicism. She unravels how the local imaginary of race was constructed and how it evolved, shedding light on subsequent interpretation of the taboos of sex, sexual desire, physical sexual malformations, and dysgenic deviance in relation to pigmentocracy as a physical expression of abnormality. She also exposes how eugenic fitness was linked to environment in a way that supported a hierarchized, classist, and exclusionary society that endures in Chile to this day. This contribution makes The Religion of Life highly relevant to current identity debates in Chile concerning its Indigenous peoples.

Climate Change, Security, and the International System: It’s Still the Same Old Story

Climate Change, Security, and the International System: It’s Still the Same Old Story

A history of eugenics in the twentieth-century Chile: in the name of the father, the science, and the race

A history of eugenics in the twentieth-century Chile: in the name of the father, the science, and the race

Debate and Diplomacy in History: Can Eugenics be Ethical?

We must look upon significant instances in the history of Eugenics, such as the California sterilization legislation, as an example of what can happen if regulatory policies are not enacted. The stories of the primarily Latina women who were involuntary sterilized serves as a warning, and reminder of what can happen when vague language in laws allows for the manifestation of personal bias in the reproduction rights of others. A variety of personal and societal factors influence our individual opinions on Eugenics, however, regardless of our opinion we must acknowledge the negative consequences for many disadvantaged groups when Eugenics goes unregulated. When examining eugenics in a modern context (Gene therapy,) there must be legislation that regulates what genes can, and cannot be altered, to prevent personal prejudices from eradicating entire groups of people with a certain disability or disease.

The Voluntary Sterilisation Act: Best Interests, Caregivers, and Disability Rights.

How can caregivers' interests be balanced with disability rights in decisions about whether to sterilise an intellectually disabled person? This question is considered in the context of Singapore, a commonwealth country that lacks a test case. Singapore has a lesser-known history of eugenics, and has struck an uneasy compromise between communitarian values and obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in recent years. This article provides an overview of Singaporean law under the Voluntary Sterilisation Act 1974 and the Mental Capacity Act 2008, and compares this with the law in Canada, England and Wales, and Australia. This article also situates the CRPD in the context of Singapore's dualist view of international law and communitarian approach to disability policy. It argues that CRPD rights to bodily integrity can be presumptively upheld in best interests determinations on sterilisation, while caregivers' interests can be accommodated in a relational understanding of best interests. A decisional framework along these lines is proposed.

Barriers to Women’s Access to Voluntary Sterilization in Canada

Introduction: In Canada, any adult who is aware of the permanent consequences of a tubal ligation is allowed to receive it, yet many doctors refuse to perform the procedure on women, especially those from marginalized communities. The purpose of this report is to investigate and identify some of the barriers that impede Canadian women’s ability to access voluntary sterilization. There is a particular focus on how Canada's history of eugenics and coerced sterilization shapes the current conditions under which women seek and are too often refused access to permanent contraception. Methods: Six qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with scholars and activists in the field of Reproductive Justice (RJ) and reproductive healthcare. The interviews facilitated discussions about reproductive autonomy, patient rights, and patriarchal attitudes in medicine. An RJ framework and thematic analysis were used to uncover systemic barriers from the interview responses. Results: As discovered through the interviews, the most prevalent barriers to access to voluntary sterilization in contemporary Canada include race, class, language, ethnicity, disability, age and parity. An RJ framework identifies historical parallels to these present-day barriers by looking at the historical and colonial forces that disempower intersectional marginalized communities and influence their reproductive decisions today. Discussions: Canada’s eugenics attitudes from the past seep into the current barriers to access faced by women of colour, low-income women, female newcomers, women with disabilities, and young or nulliparous women. The assumption that these women are not capable of deciding the right course of action for their own bodies and thus should not be trusted by healthcare providers in making these decisions is a consistent problem in both time frames. Conclusion: The restrictions and modes of disempowerment placed on variously positioned women in the past come back in a new form that leads to those same groups being doubted and denied reproductive justice in the present. Many of the interviewees believed that increasing diversity in the medical field is necessary to help alleviate the discrepancies in how contraceptive healthcare is given.

Shared Decision-Making: The Way Forward for Postpartum Contraceptive Counseling.

There are multi-level barriers that impact uptake of postpartum contraception and result in disparities, including clinical barriers such as provider bias. Fortunately, clinicians have direct control over their contraceptive counseling practices, and thus reducing structural barriers is actionable through high quality contraceptive counseling that equips patients with the knowledge and guidance they need to fulfill their reproductive desires. Yet, many commonly employed contraceptive counseling strategies, like One Key Question and WHO tiered contraceptive counseling, are not patient-driven, do not account for the important nuances of contraceptive choices, and are not focused specifically on the postpartum period. Given the history of eugenics and reproductive coercion in the US, supporting patient through their contraceptive decision-making process is especially vital. Additionally, contraceptive preferences vary based on patient-level factors and fluctuate over time and counseling should account for such differences. Shared contraceptive decision-making occurs when patients provide input on their values, desires, and preferences and clinicians share medical knowledge and evidence-based information without judgement. This approach is considered the most ethically sound form of counseling, as it maximizes patient autonomy. Shared decision-making also has clinical benefits, including increased patient satisfaction. In sum, shared contraceptive decision-making should be universally adopted to promote ethical, high-quality care and reproductive autonomy.

Exhumed: Reckoning with the History of Eugenics in Marriage and Family Therapy

The purpose of this article is to educate Marriage and Family Therapists about the history of the profession and to call attention to the troubling history of eugenics as it pertains to current ethical practice. The eugenics movement sought to increase the marriage and reproduction of healthy, white people, while implementing a system of institutionalization and sterilization to deter the reproduction of people of color, people with disabilities, and anyone determined to be “undesirable” by eugenicists. The helping professions, including Marriage and Family Therapy arose during the years when this took place, and contributed to the implementation of eugenics in a variety of ways. Founders of the field of Marriage and Family Therapy, including eugenicist Paul Popenoe, also known as the father of marriage counseling, played a key role in linking eugenics ideals and practices with Marriage and Family Therapy. While other professions, and indeed other organizations of all types, have worked to understand their participation in the promotion of eugenics ideals, and have issued apologies along with commitments to function ethically in the future, Marriage and Family Therapy has yet to do so. This article is a call to reckon with our history, to understand it, to educate and to practice ethically in the future.

Sir Francis Galton: A Historiographical Reassessment of British Psychology’s Eugenic Past, 1860–1940

Many people find it difficult to accept British psychology’s eugenic history. Much of the literature is unhelpful in its abstention from comprehensive and lucid accounts of the Galtonian eugenic origins of much published work on individual differences in intelligence and personality deemed as inherited, the multifaceted nature of eugenics itself, or the complexity of this legacy in the early 20th century. Despite some well researched accounts of highly specific aspects of eugenic influence, the wider picture often remains elusive. Yet as the implications of eugenics for studies of race, class, and the histories of institutions and academic disciplines are increasingly interrogated, this is ever more inappropriate. Its eugenic past forms part of the challenging history of British psychology. Though a single paper cannot address these issues in their entirety, this thematic reappraisal of Galton and his legacy in the early 20th century provides a crucial initial step.

Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries by Ingo Cornils

Reviewed by: Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries by Ingo Cornils Anne Fuchs Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries. By Ingo Cornils. Rochester: Camden House. 2020. 322 pp. £80; $99 (ebk £19.99; $24.99). ISBN 978–1–64014–035–6 (ebk 978–1–78744–797–4). Speculative fiction has been the dark continent of German Studies until very recently. While Germanistik has largely ignored popular genres such as fantasy or Science Fiction (SF) because of their perceived poor aesthetic ‘value’, Anglophone German Studies has been in the grip of the discourse on Vergangenheitsbewältigung and the prevailing memory paradigm. As a result of this foreshortening of the field, the burgeoning domain of speculative fiction has remained largely unexplored. Against this backdrop the publication of Ingo Cornils’s study is to be welcomed: it marks a shift from the Anglophone preoccupation with the outdated discourse on Vergangenheitsbewältigung towards what Cornils aptly calls Zukunftsbewältigung. The scope of Cornils’s study is astonishing: it deals with 70 novels and 25 films, from Kurd Laßwitz’s Auf zwei Planeten (1897)—the earliest example of German SF—to best-selling author Franz Schätzing’s Die Tyrannei der Schmetterlinge (2018) and Theresa Hannig’s Die Unvollkommenen (2019). The book also covers a wide range of SF films and TV formats, from Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s classics Metropolis and Die Frau im Mond to the 1960s prime-time TV series Raumpatrouille, which, as Cornils convincingly shows, set new standards in set design as its disc-shaped spaceship Orion was inspired by the Bauhaus. While the representation of slick technology in the series signalled the technological modernization of West Germany, the unisex uniforms gestured towards female emancipation. Cornils’s study is at its best when it engages with the popular SF tradition: another prominent example in this vein is Stefan Ruzowitzki and Michael Krummenbacher’s TV series Acht Tage (broadcast in 2019), which imagines an extinction scenario in an entertaining format. The rediscovery of the digitally restored version of Fassbinder’s Welt am Draht (1973) is another highlight: the film explores the political repercussions of the erosion of the difference between simulation and reality long before the invention of the Internet. By analysing both high-brow and popular formats Cornils rightly highlights the malleability of a genre which spans the entire spectrum from the most critical and gloomy dystopias to entertaining and fast-paced plots about the race against the clock. Occasionally Cornils stretches the genre boundaries too elastically—by, for example, including Schnabel’s island utopia Die Insel Felsenburg or Uwe Timm’s novel Ikarien, which tracks the history of eugenics. Cornils’s book does not pursue a literary-historical exploration of the development of the genre. Rather than systematically exploring the genre’s intrinsic responsiveness to the rapid advance of modernization in Germany after 1871 right up to the end of the Weimar Republic and after the Second World War in the context of Germany’s division, Cornils groups his material into fourteen short chapters that explore themes such as first contact stories, catastrophism, virtual realities, surveillance, space stories, AI, and eternal life, to name but a few. This is understandable, given the richness of futurist scenarios and preoccupations. However, [End Page 142] this prevailing thematic focus flattens the history of the genre. Given the subtitle, the broad-brush discussion of German utopian thought in Part i comes across as too male-centric and rather eclectic: neither literary critic Jost Hermand nor the late FAZ editor Joachim Fest nor the sociologist Harald Welzer is an obvious contributor to the great tradition of utopian thinking from Hegel to Benjamin and Hannah Arendt to Ernst Bloch. Even though Cornils’s book does not do full justice to the socio-philosophical contexts of utopianism or to the contemporary debates on posthumanism and the Anthropocene as central drivers of SF, it does offer a rich survey of the German SF tradition. Its coverage will make it an indispensable reference point and source book for further analyses of an unduly neglected genre. Anne Fuchs University...

You can't keep a bad idea down: Dark history, death, and potential rebirth of eugenics.

"Be careful what you wish for": This adage guides both how this project came to life, and how the topic covered in this review continues to unfold. What began as talks between two friends on shared interests in military history led to a 4-year discussion about how our science curriculum does little to introduce our students to societal and ethical impacts of the science they are taught. What emerged was a curricular idea centered on how "good intentions" of some were developed and twisted by others to result in disastrous consequences of state-sanctioned eugenics. In this article, we take the reader (as we did our students) through the long and soiled history of eugenic thought, from its genesis to the present. Though our focus is on European and American eugenics, we will show how the interfaces and interactions between science and society have evolved over time but have remained ever constant. Four critical 'case studies' will also be employed here for deep, thoughtful exploration on a particular eugenic issue. The goal of the review, as it is with our course, is not to paint humanity with a single evil brush. Instead, our ambition is to introduce our students/readers to the potential for harm through the misapplication and misappropriation of science and scientific technology, and to provide them with the tools to ask the appropriate questions of their scientists, physicians, and politicians.

The intimate labour of internationalism: maternalist humanitarians and the mid-twentieth century family planning movement

AbstractThis article moves past high politics and the most prominent activists to explore the daily, intimate practice of international movement building by mid-level fieldworkers within the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) during its first decade of existence (1952–62). It illustrates how fieldworkers and the IPPF’s practitioner-oriented newsletter Around the World attempted to bridge the ideological and geographic diversity of the family planning movement and connect with advocates around the world through an emotive narrative of suffering, love, and global humanity, reinforced by affective bonds and women’s volunteerism. The story of global family planning must thus be seen not only as part of the history of eugenics, population control, and feminism, but also as part of the longer trajectory of maternalist humanitarianism. This mid-twentieth century version of maternalist humanitarianism built on earlier traditions but also incorporated concepts of human rights, critiques of dominant gender and sexual norms, and an official commitment to local self-determination in the context of decolonization movements. Still, the organization was plagued by the problems that shape humanitarianism more broadly, including the difficulty of moving past colonialist discourses, deeply rooted feelings of racial superiority, and the contradictions inherent in attempts to impose an impossible ideal of political neutrality in a politically complex world. Looking at the history of global family planning from this perspective thus helps us understand how the different traditions, intimate relationships, and practical experiences mid-level actors bring to their work shape the broader process of international movement building, beyond high-level political and ideological activism.

Canceral Imaginaries


 
 
 This article examines the carceral imaginaries that emerge from the late capitalist structure of organ donation as an issue of short supply. This piece explores this issue through the lens of spatial segregation, arguing that carceral imaginaries are spaces of luxury where donors are segregated from recipients and are thereby legally murdered. The focus is Ninni Holmqvist’s novel The Unit (2008) where the future is structured through gender equality but reproductive normativity. Donors are segregated away in the luxurious unit because they have not repro- duced. Having not produced future generations of labourers, these donors must contribute to the nation by donating their body parts to the reproductive – and therefore productive – members of the nation. Focusing on Sweden’s history of eugenics and on gender equality, this article argues that the very space of care, namely the clinic, which facilitates life-saving treatments also subjects whole populations to violence and death through reproductive norms. Finally, it sug- gests that space is both that through which bodies move, but also the body itself. That is, the segregation of the body’s parts and the idea that space may be divided by borders are mutually constitutive and found both the restrictions of bodily movement through space and murder as the gift of life.