Reading The Hour of Eugenics, I was struck by a few things. First, I was surprised to see that so much of the debate centered around Lamarckism vs. Mendelian genetics. Though Leys Stepan mentions Franz Boaz a few times, she does not really say much about what would have been the intellectual counterweight to eugenics, namely the increasing awareness in the social sciences that environment and culture are the key determinants of human behavior and ability, not race and not biological inheritance. It also struck me as very ironic that eugenics, even in its more benign forms, would have such salience in Latin America, given the fact that it seems to be at odds with many of the nation-building narratives we have been studying. Most of these narratives either entailed the denial of racial differences altogether or promoted the notion of race mixing in order to conceptualize a national identity built upon and imagined sense of racial amalgamation. Ultimately, this may be part of why eugenics did not take the paths it did in Nazi Germany or the U.S. Despite the marked differences between racial segregation and sterilization of "inferior" races on the one hand and the belief that all peoples had been subsumed into one on the other, it seems that both of these philosophies had similar ends.
I agree with you Mike about the irony of eugenics in Latin America after all that we've read. Although some of what we read did have elements of "denial of racial difference," there's still some there about racial superiority (specifically, early on when some folks wanted to Identify with Europe/Spain). This is probably why we see the rise of Fascism in Latin America during the Third Reich, in places like Brazil, and Argentina.
In the author's choices outlined on page 14, Leys Stepan states that this book is focused on the “individuals, publications, and institutions.” Through the course of the book and the details of organizations and individuals who surround the eugenics movement, the connotation usually associated with eugenics as being racially motivated and generally harmful to a population of people seems to be hidden, or at the very least downplayed. Leys Stepan writes about eugenics as it pertains to other fields and manifests itself in various ways of the years. For example, “as the eugenic creed won new converts, the language of eugenics began to infuse scientific discussions of health. Improvement was now discussed in terms of ‘eugenic’ and ‘dysgenic’ factors, fitness and unfitness, and hereditary ‘taras’ (defects).” She connects eugenics to mental hygiene, legal medicine, reproduction, social reform, etc. This information is helpful in better understanding the dynamics of eugenics as a movement and its growth from other disciplines. However, at times it feels like the author is ignoring the negative aspects of eugenics in her search to write about the topic in a different way that most other literature. Does anyone else feel this way? I think it is an interesting choice to write about eugenics through the philosophical movement, though I feel like some of the ways eugenics is articulated and the negative repercussions of the movement are ignored through that decision (though that may be the place in the book I am).
Melanie, I definitely see where you are coming from, and I definitely had similar feelings early on. I was very skeptical of the notion of a "positive eugenics." Aside from trying to disassociate one's self from the atrocities that this movement has led to in the US and especially in Nazi Germany, the idea of racial superiority (which I assumed) is inherent and inextricable from eugenics also seemed repugnant and illogical, regardless of how it is implemented. However, as she lays out this argument over the course of the book, I can see how these ideas took various forms and how the ideas of white racial superiority were rejected, for the most part, in Latin America. Part of this has to do with the extent to which societies and institutions were able to concede that environmental factors play an important role and that they need to be addressed. The other important factor, I think, is the fact that the (white) racial superiority, which remains inextricable from the notion, was, and almost had to be, rejected by societies which were composed of "racially mixed" peoples. Along with other mitigating factors, these things seem to have abated the extreme ends eugenics was put to in other places, including here. All that being said, I believe these ideas did have an effect in terms immigration policies, etc. I think that has to be owned and acknowledged as well.
Stepan seeks to define eugenics in a place that is, "situated outside the region, regarded as 'tropical,' 'backward,' and racially 'degenerate.'" Her arguments for a differentiation of eugenics in Latin America and the rest of the world are really interesting, and at first it was difficult to agree with Stepan. I couldn't get over the overall evil and racism surrounding the ideology of eugenics. However, Stepan does make me think that there is something here to discuss. For example when Stepan talks about eugenics being linked to problems like criminality, prostitution, and juvenile delinquency, we can see the differentiation between "social" purification or "mental hygiene" and "racial" purification that we see in Nazism (although there's definitely hints of racial purification in places like Brazil that she mentions). The idea that insanity or crime was a hereditary issue in the context of Latin America really begins to show how eugenics might have been different in there. What did you guys think of this? Were you convinced by her arguments?
I agree Kevin, Eugenics was used here in Latin America, and other parts of the world as a "public health" and "public purification" project to transform these societies from the "backwardness" that they had to becoming "civilized". This was used to transform Latin American societies to the nations own vision of a eugenized family.
I agree that Stepan makes me think there is more to the idea of eugenics than what is usually envisioned when thinking of eugenics. I think some of her argument about the difference between eugenics in Europe and in Latin America makes sense in how the connotation of eugenics is different in the different regions. Some of the difference comes from what Mike mentions above, the idea of white superiority can not be fully enforced in regions where mixed race individuals were the norm. Stepan definitely argues adequately that we should broaden the definition of eugenics, but I am still not sure I am convinced that there is that much of a difference between Latin American and European eugenics because the same foundation is there.
Yes, Stepan evoked a similar reticence during my reading as well, Kevin.
Something I'm wondering (and wish I could discuss with you all in person!) is whether it would be useful to draw a parallel between public health and eugenics and slavery and race from our week 6 discussion--not that public health and slavery are comparable (AT ALL), but that race was once neatly housed in the institution of slavery, until emancipation, and it had to attach itself to a new 'house'; citizenship, in the case of that book.
Is it possible that eugenics is "race" in this book? At the very least, both "race" and eugenics concern themselves with mutability, no?
Its super interesting because I loved researching and studying WWII and especially the strange aspect of eugenics behind Nazi science. this book was really good in that it acknowledges the predominant feelings of the term and its uses in Western Europe and reveals to us that this influence was picked up in Latin America, but even changed to be focused on a perhaps more sociocultural phenomena than a racially biological one. She mentions this heavily in her introduction (duh), that often scholars only focus on these massive ideological movements but never analyze the implications and influences on less popular regions (ie: Latin America).
Obviously this week focused on the study of Eugenics and how it was utilized and portrayed in Latin America, and how this shaped political policy. What I really enjoyed about this book was how it explained when with Public Health concerns were raised, how Eugenics was used to create answers to these problems. “One answer to the dilemmas posed by a diseased body politic was to sanitize, moralize, and “eugenize” the family. The focus on women and children within the family seemed natural enough, given that death from “weakness” and stillbirths accounted for 70% of the mortality of all newborn infants even in the medically advanced city of Sao Paulo. Eugenics appealed, then, to an expanding medical class, eager to promote its role as specialists of the social life.”(44)
Clearly in Latin America, this almost creates a sort of "racial policy" which was used to classify people upon racial means even more. Even though a hierarchy was already established this system was now to make it become a Public health issue now. I feel like for this week we should definitely focus on how eugenics was posed as a answer to Public Health to already a world based on racial hierarchies, and how this effected Latin American society.
I agree with you here, I also found it interesting when they brought up the issues regarding public health as well as how they chose to handle certain aspects. It seemed that they used this to propel the importance of the hierarchy you mentioned and give the governments some concrete evidence as to why they felt they needed to have this system.
Like Mike noted in his comment above, I also had a moment of pause in realizing the contrast that this book creates against the nation-building narratives that we know manifested in the various Latin American countries we’ve studied: how could elites, which in this book are identified as doctors, advocate for eugenics that would improve” the nation’s race when other texts we’ve read made clear that etiquette dictated that race was not to be discussed in public forums.(There were workarounds, of course, such as being able to publicly discuss race so long as an individual wasn’t named.)
The peculiarity above, for me, gestured towards what made Stepan’s text such an interesting read. Even though Stepan limits the scope of her book to scientific writings, peoples, and institutions, she frames her conversation in a way that subtly nods towards other historiography. In the case of reconciling eugenics and the public etiquette/nation-building narratives, we might look at this passage in which she discusses the links between eugenics and nation-building, which, in my opinion, could supplement Rebecca Earle’s work very well: “the desire to ‘imagine’ the nation in biological terms...to define om novel terms who could belong to the nation and who could not--all these aspects of eugenics...produced intrusive proposals or prescriptions for new state policies toward individuals” (105).
I always seem to comment before posting my initial thoughts because I want to respond to the interesting ideas I see before I forget my contribution. In response to one of Ricardo's comments, I was literally just thinking that: eugenics IS race in this book. If not so directly, I did get the feeling that once again race has found its way into another social outlet for hierarchy. In this situation, the hierarchy is based on supposed genetically (or in Latin American cases, socially) assumed superiority and inferiority. I thought Leys Stephen did a great job in analyzing the difference here.
I agree with all the comments made, and in principle cannot disavow the nature of eugenics when conceptualized as an “evil.” As Stepan notes, elites in Latin America promoted the idea of eugenics because of their racial prejudices towards the minorities, who they regarded as backward. The elite wanted to eliminate, or breed out the results of race-mixing. This was a racial and political ideology that befits the elite’s perspective of heredity and superiority; they (the elite) were promoting a discourse of national identity that closely resembled the more advanced Europeans. However, if we are to discount the benefits derived from the “scientific” research that emanated from the eugenics movement, we would then be guilty of being somewhat naive when it comes to understanding just exactly how science conducts research to find treatments, and ultimately, cures for various diseases. An example can be the search for a cure for cancer. The thousands of animals (human and non-human) subjected to some of the cruelest experiment’s that make the Inquisition look like a walk-in-the–park, have in fact benefited mankind by advancing science by more than fifty years. Therefore, and as Stepan posits, “explaining human illness and suggesting practical policies of reform; politically, such a theory served in the interests of doctors, since qua theory it legitimated a medical-interventionist approach to health (198).” The eugenics movement was seen by many well placed scientists, medical doctors, and social activists, who endorsed it as an appropriate outcome of developments in the science of human heredity. (5) The argument is, at best, frightening.
As some have mentioned here, one of the surprising but yet expected aspects was that despite being proponents of racial indifference and building toward a national identity; they still pursued the path of eugenics. Not because eugenics isn't a worthwhile study especially within Latin America but because it was so far from what we have experienced in the readings before. Yet the author does make a compelling case for further study in a field that has been thoroughly sullied by German Nazi's in World War II.
Reading The Hour of Eugenics, I was struck by a few things. First, I was surprised to see that so much of the debate centered around Lamarckism vs. Mendelian genetics. Though Leys Stepan mentions Franz Boaz a few times, she does not really say much about what would have been the intellectual counterweight to eugenics, namely the increasing awareness in the social sciences that environment and culture are the key determinants of human behavior and ability, not race and not biological inheritance. It also struck me as very ironic that eugenics, even in its more benign forms, would have such salience in Latin America, given the fact that it seems to be at odds with many of the nation-building narratives we have been studying. Most of these narratives either entailed the denial of racial differences altogether or promoted the notion of race mixing in order to conceptualize a national identity built upon and imagined sense of racial amalgamation. Ultimately, this may be part of why eugenics did not take the paths it did in Nazi Germany or the U.S. Despite the marked differences between racial segregation and sterilization of "inferior" races on the one hand and the belief that all peoples had been subsumed into one on the other, it seems that both of these philosophies had similar ends.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Mike about the irony of eugenics in Latin America after all that we've read. Although some of what we read did have elements of "denial of racial difference," there's still some there about racial superiority (specifically, early on when some folks wanted to Identify with Europe/Spain). This is probably why we see the rise of Fascism in Latin America during the Third Reich, in places like Brazil, and Argentina.
DeleteIn the author's choices outlined on page 14, Leys Stepan states that this book is focused on the “individuals, publications, and institutions.” Through the course of the book and the details of organizations and individuals who surround the eugenics movement, the connotation usually associated with eugenics as being racially motivated and generally harmful to a population of people seems to be hidden, or at the very least downplayed. Leys Stepan writes about eugenics as it pertains to other fields and manifests itself in various ways of the years. For example, “as the eugenic creed won new converts, the language of eugenics began to infuse scientific discussions of health. Improvement was now discussed in terms of ‘eugenic’ and ‘dysgenic’ factors, fitness and unfitness, and hereditary ‘taras’ (defects).” She connects eugenics to mental hygiene, legal medicine, reproduction, social reform, etc. This information is helpful in better understanding the dynamics of eugenics as a movement and its growth from other disciplines. However, at times it feels like the author is ignoring the negative aspects of eugenics in her search to write about the topic in a different way that most other literature. Does anyone else feel this way? I think it is an interesting choice to write about eugenics through the philosophical movement, though I feel like some of the ways eugenics is articulated and the negative repercussions of the movement are ignored through that decision (though that may be the place in the book I am).
ReplyDeleteMelanie, I definitely see where you are coming from, and I definitely had similar feelings early on. I was very skeptical of the notion of a "positive eugenics." Aside from trying to disassociate one's self from the atrocities that this movement has led to in the US and especially in Nazi Germany, the idea of racial superiority (which I assumed) is inherent and inextricable from eugenics also seemed repugnant and illogical, regardless of how it is implemented. However, as she lays out this argument over the course of the book, I can see how these ideas took various forms and how the ideas of white racial superiority were rejected, for the most part, in Latin America. Part of this has to do with the extent to which societies and institutions were able to concede that environmental factors play an important role and that they need to be addressed. The other important factor, I think, is the fact that the (white) racial superiority, which remains inextricable from the notion, was, and almost had to be, rejected by societies which were composed of "racially mixed" peoples. Along with other mitigating factors, these things seem to have abated the extreme ends eugenics was put to in other places, including here. All that being said, I believe these ideas did have an effect in terms immigration policies, etc. I think that has to be owned and acknowledged as well.
DeleteStepan seeks to define eugenics in a place that is, "situated outside the region, regarded as 'tropical,' 'backward,' and racially 'degenerate.'" Her arguments for a differentiation of eugenics in Latin America and the rest of the world are really interesting, and at first it was difficult to agree with Stepan. I couldn't get over the overall evil and racism surrounding the ideology of eugenics. However, Stepan does make me think that there is something here to discuss. For example when Stepan talks about eugenics being linked to problems like criminality, prostitution, and juvenile delinquency, we can see the differentiation between "social" purification or "mental hygiene" and "racial" purification that we see in Nazism (although there's definitely hints of racial purification in places like Brazil that she mentions). The idea that insanity or crime was a hereditary issue in the context of Latin America really begins to show how eugenics might have been different in there. What did you guys think of this? Were you convinced by her arguments?
ReplyDeleteI agree Kevin, Eugenics was used here in Latin America, and other parts of the world as a "public health" and "public purification" project to transform these societies from the "backwardness" that they had to becoming "civilized". This was used to transform Latin American societies to the nations own vision of a eugenized family.
DeleteI agree that Stepan makes me think there is more to the idea of eugenics than what is usually envisioned when thinking of eugenics. I think some of her argument about the difference between eugenics in Europe and in Latin America makes sense in how the connotation of eugenics is different in the different regions. Some of the difference comes from what Mike mentions above, the idea of white superiority can not be fully enforced in regions where mixed race individuals were the norm. Stepan definitely argues adequately that we should broaden the definition of eugenics, but I am still not sure I am convinced that there is that much of a difference between Latin American and European eugenics because the same foundation is there.
DeleteYes, Stepan evoked a similar reticence during my reading as well, Kevin.
DeleteSomething I'm wondering (and wish I could discuss with you all in person!) is whether it would be useful to draw a parallel between public health and eugenics and slavery and race from our week 6 discussion--not that public health and slavery are comparable (AT ALL), but that race was once neatly housed in the institution of slavery, until emancipation, and it had to attach itself to a new 'house'; citizenship, in the case of that book.
Is it possible that eugenics is "race" in this book? At the very least, both "race" and eugenics concern themselves with mutability, no?
Its super interesting because I loved researching and studying WWII and especially the strange aspect of eugenics behind Nazi science. this book was really good in that it acknowledges the predominant feelings of the term and its uses in Western Europe and reveals to us that this influence was picked up in Latin America, but even changed to be focused on a perhaps more sociocultural phenomena than a racially biological one. She mentions this heavily in her introduction (duh), that often scholars only focus on these massive ideological movements but never analyze the implications and influences on less popular regions (ie: Latin America).
DeleteObviously this week focused on the study of Eugenics and how it was utilized and portrayed in Latin America, and how this shaped political policy. What I really enjoyed about this book was how it explained when with Public Health concerns were raised, how Eugenics was used to create answers to these problems. “One answer to the dilemmas posed by a diseased body politic was to sanitize, moralize, and “eugenize” the family. The focus on women and children within the family seemed natural enough, given that death from “weakness” and stillbirths accounted for 70% of the mortality of all newborn infants even in the medically advanced city of Sao Paulo. Eugenics appealed, then, to an expanding medical class, eager to promote its role as specialists of the social life.”(44)
ReplyDeleteClearly in Latin America, this almost creates a sort of "racial policy" which was used to classify people upon racial means even more. Even though a hierarchy was already established this system was now to make it become a Public health issue now. I feel like for this week we should definitely focus on how eugenics was posed as a answer to Public Health to already a world based on racial hierarchies, and how this effected Latin American society.
I agree with you here, I also found it interesting when they brought up the issues regarding public health as well as how they chose to handle certain aspects. It seemed that they used this to propel the importance of the hierarchy you mentioned and give the governments some concrete evidence as to why they felt they needed to have this system.
DeleteLike Mike noted in his comment above, I also had a moment of pause in realizing the contrast that this book creates against the nation-building narratives that we know manifested in the various Latin American countries we’ve studied: how could elites, which in this book are identified as doctors, advocate for eugenics that would improve” the nation’s race when other texts we’ve read made clear that etiquette dictated that race was not to be discussed in public forums.(There were workarounds, of course, such as being able to publicly discuss race so long as an individual wasn’t named.)
ReplyDeleteThe peculiarity above, for me, gestured towards what made Stepan’s text such an interesting read. Even though Stepan limits the scope of her book to scientific writings, peoples, and institutions, she frames her conversation in a way that subtly nods towards other historiography. In the case of reconciling eugenics and the public etiquette/nation-building narratives, we might look at this passage in which she discusses the links between eugenics and nation-building, which, in my opinion, could supplement Rebecca Earle’s work very well: “the desire to ‘imagine’ the nation in biological terms...to define om novel terms who could belong to the nation and who could not--all these aspects of eugenics...produced intrusive proposals or prescriptions for new state policies toward individuals” (105).
I always seem to comment before posting my initial thoughts because I want to respond to the interesting ideas I see before I forget my contribution. In response to one of Ricardo's comments, I was literally just thinking that: eugenics IS race in this book. If not so directly, I did get the feeling that once again race has found its way into another social outlet for hierarchy. In this situation, the hierarchy is based on supposed genetically (or in Latin American cases, socially) assumed superiority and inferiority. I thought Leys Stephen did a great job in analyzing the difference here.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all the comments made, and in principle cannot disavow the nature of eugenics when conceptualized as an “evil.” As Stepan notes, elites in Latin America promoted the idea of eugenics because of their racial prejudices towards the minorities, who they regarded as backward. The elite wanted to eliminate, or breed out the results of race-mixing. This was a racial and political ideology that befits the elite’s perspective of heredity and superiority; they (the elite) were promoting a discourse of national identity that closely resembled the more advanced Europeans. However, if we are to discount the benefits derived from the “scientific” research that emanated from the eugenics movement, we would then be guilty of being somewhat naive when it comes to understanding just exactly how science conducts research to find treatments, and ultimately, cures for various diseases. An example can be the search for a cure for cancer. The thousands of animals (human and non-human) subjected to some of the cruelest experiment’s that make the Inquisition look like a walk-in-the–park, have in fact benefited mankind by advancing science by more than fifty years. Therefore, and as Stepan posits, “explaining human illness and suggesting practical policies of reform; politically, such a theory served in the interests of doctors, since qua theory it legitimated a medical-interventionist approach to health (198).” The eugenics movement was seen by many well placed scientists, medical doctors, and social activists, who endorsed it as an appropriate outcome of developments in the science of human heredity. (5) The argument is, at best, frightening.
ReplyDeleteAs some have mentioned here, one of the surprising but yet expected aspects was that despite being proponents of racial indifference and building toward a national identity; they still pursued the path of eugenics. Not because eugenics isn't a worthwhile study especially within Latin America but because it was so far from what we have experienced in the readings before. Yet the author does make a compelling case for further study in a field that has been thoroughly sullied by German Nazi's in World War II.
ReplyDelete