Eugenic Nation

Many people assume that eugenics all but disappeared with the fall of Nazism, but as this sweeping history demonstrates, the idea of better breeding had a wide and surprising reach in the United States throughout the twentieth century. With an original emphasis on the American West, Eugenic Nation brings to light many little-known facts—for example, that one-third of the involuntary sterilizations in this country occurred in California between 1909 and 1979—as it explores the influence of eugenics on phenomena as varied as race-based intelligence tests, school segregation, tropical medicine, the Border Patrol, and the environmental movement. Eugenic Nation begins in the 1900s, when influential California eugenicists molded an extensive agenda of better breeding for the rest of the country. The book traces hereditarian theories of sex and gender to the culture of conformity of the 1950s and moves to the 1960s, arguing that the liberation movements of that decade emerged in part as a challenge to policies and practices informed by eugenics.

"With an emphasis on the American West, Eugenic Nation explores the long and unsettled history of eugenics in the United States. This expanded second edition includes shocking details that demonstrate that the story is far from over. Alexandra Minna Stern explores the unauthorized sterilization of female inmates in California state prisons and ongoing reparations for North Carolina victims of sterilization, as well as the topics of race-based intelligence tests, school segregation, the U.S. Border Patrol, tropical medicine, the environmental movement, and opposition to better breeding. Radically new and relevant, this edition draws from recently uncovered historical records to demonstrate patterns of racial bias in California's sterilization program and to recover personal experiences of reproductive injustice. Stern connects the eugenic past to the genomic present with attention to the ethical and social implications of emerging genetic technologies"--Provided by publisher.

The history of eugenics and racial nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe is a neglected topic of analysis in contemporary scholarship. Moreover, national historiographies in Central and Southeast Europe have either marginalized eugenics and racial nationalism or deemed them incompatible with their respective national traditions. Accordingly, this volume has a two-fold ambition: to excavate the hitherto unknown eugenic movements in Central and Southeast Europe and to explain their relationship with racism, nationalism and anti-Semitism. On the one hand, the historiographic perspective substantiated in this volume connects developments in the history of racial anthropology, genetics and eugenics with political ideologies such as racial nationalism and anti-Semitism; on the other hand, it contests the 'Sonderweg' approach adopted by scholars dealing these phenomena in Central and Southeast Europe by arguing that concerns with eugenics and race were as widely disseminated in these regions as they were in Western Europe and North America. Book jacket.

The ever growing library on the history of eugenics and fascism focuses largely on nation states, while this monograph asks why an ethnic minority, the Transylvanian Saxons, turned to eugenics as a means of self-empowerment in interwar Romania. The Eugenic Fortress investigates and unpacks the eugenic movement that emerged in the early twentieth century, and focuses on its conceptual and methodological evolution during the interwar period. Further on, the book analyzes the gradual process of politicisation and radicalisation at the hands of a second generation of Saxon eugenicists in conjunction with the rise of an equally indigenous fascist movement. The Saxon case study offers valuable insights into why an ethnic minority would seek to re-entrench itself behind the race-hygienic walls of a 'eugenic fortress', as well as the influence host and home nations had upon its design. Georgescu's work is ground breaking in the sense that the history of this uprooted community is usually handled with sensitivity and serious (and critical) research into Transylvanian Saxon involvement with Nazism has been energetically resisted.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1987.

This book analyzes whether the "new debate on genetics" owes a debt to eugenic practices by welfare democracies of 1930s and 1940s. More specifically, the question is whether precisely the same "eugenic rationale" used in the 1930s is philosophical akin to a new rationality unfolding in some Western European welfare societies that find themselves trapped in the modern dilemma of choosing between increasing immigration and population growth that leads to economic prosperity on the one hand, or halting immigration, protecting national identity, and suffering economic stagnation on the other. By analyzing, policies of integration and assisted reproduction technology (ART) in Northern European nation states such as Sweden, Finland, Denmark as well as in Israel, we find a historical continuity between "old eugenics" and current reproductive and family planning subsides and integration policies. By focusing on the concept of welfare productionism, we trace a continuing rationale between the eugenic policies of the past and current investments of ART. These programs, are rationalized as universal programs for the whole of the population. However, in this book the authors suggest that they served the goal of reproducing a productivist, national middle class which are enticed to reproduce. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of racism, extremism, European politics, population politics, and the social impact of science and technology.

One of America's great miscarriages of justice, the Supreme Court's infamous 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling made government sterilization of "undesirable" citizens the law of the land New York Times bestselling author Adam Cohen tells the story in Imbeciles of one of the darkest moments in the American legal tradition: the Supreme Court's decision to champion eugenic sterilization for the greater good of the country. In 1927, when the nation was caught up in eugenic fervor, the justices allowed Virginia to sterilize Carrie Buck, a perfectly normal young woman, for being an "imbecile." It is a story with many villains, from the superintendent of the Dickensian Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded who chose Carrie for sterilization to the former Missouri agriculture professor and Nazi sympathizer who was the nation's leading advocate for eugenic sterilization. But the most troubling actors of all were the eight Supreme Court justices who were in the majority - including William Howard Taft, the former president; Louis Brandeis, the legendary progressive; and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., America's most esteemed justice, who wrote the decision urging the nation to embark on a program of mass eugenic sterilization. Exposing this tremendous injustice--which led to the sterilization of 70,000 Americans--Imbeciles overturns cherished myths and reappraises heroic figures in its relentless pursuit of the truth. With the precision of a legal brief and the passion of a front-page exposé, Cohen's Imbeciles is an unquestionable triumph of American legal and social history, an ardent accusation against these acclaimed men and our own optimistic faith in progress.

Eugenics was a term coined in 1883 to name the scientific and social theory which advocated "race improvement" through selective human breeding. In Europe and the United States the eugenics movement found many supporters before it was finally discredited by its association with the racist ideology of Nazi Germany. Examining for the first time how eugenics was taken up by scientists and social reformers in Latin America, Nancy Leys Stepan compares the eugenics movements in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina with the more familiar cases of Britain, the United States, and Germany.In this highly original account, Stepan sheds new light on the role of science in reformulating issues of race, gender, reproduction, and public health in an era when the focus on national identity was particularly intense. Drawing upon a rich body of evidence concerning the technical publications and professional meetings of Latin American eugenicists, she examines how they adapted eugenic principles to local contexts between the world wars. Stepan shows that Latin American eugenicists diverged considerably from their counterparts in Europe and the United States in their ideological approach and their interpretations of key texts concerning heredity.