"An examination of eugenic thinking past and present, from forced sterilization to prenatal screening, drawing on experience with those who survived eugenics.
Part science and part social movement, eugenics emerged in the late nineteenth century as a tool for human improvement. In response to perceived threats of criminality, moral degeneration, feeble-mindedness, and ""the rising tide of color,"" eugenic laws and social policies aimed to better the human race by regulating reproductive choice through science and technology. In this book, Rob Wilson examines eugenic thought and practice--from forced sterilization to prenatal screening--drawing on his experience working with eugenics survivors.
Using the social sciences' standpoint theory as a framework to understand the intersection of eugenics, disability, social inclusiveness, and human variation, Wilson focuses on those who have lived through a eugenic past and those confronted by the legacy of eugenic thinking today. By doing so, he brings eugenics from the distant past to the ongoing present. Wilson discusses such topics as the conceptualization of eugenic traits; the formulation of laws regulating immigration and marriage and requiring sexual sterilization; the depiction of the targets of eugenics as ""subhuman"";
the systematic construction of a concept of normality; the eugenic logic in prenatal screening and contemporary bioethics; and the incorporation of eugenics and disability into standpoint theory."
By:
Robert A. Wilson
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 1mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780262542708
ISBN 10: 0262542706
Pages: 352
Publication Date: 13 April 2021
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
I Eugenic Activities: Probing Eugenics 1 1 Standpointing Eugenics 3 2 Characterizing Eugenics 25 3 Specifying Eugenic Traits 51 4 Subhumanizing the Targets of Eugenics 77 II Eugenic Variations: The Persistence of Eugenics 99 5 Where Do Ideas of Human Variation Come From? 101 6 A Socio-cognitive Framework for Marked Variation 121 7 Black Doors, Newgenics, and Eugenics Underground 141 8 Eugenics as Wrongful Accusation 167 III Eugenic Voices: Knowing Agency at the Margins 193 9 Knowing Agency 195 10 Eugenics Unbound: Survivorship for the Subhuman 213 Notes 235 References 271 Index 297
Robert A. Wilson is Professor of Philosophy at La Trobe University, the author of Genes and the Agents of Life, and coeditor of The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences and of Explanation and Cognition (MIT Press). He directed the project that built EugenicsArchive.ca and is a director and the executive producer of the documentary Surviving Eugenics.
