Modernism and Eugenics

Modernism and Eugenics comprehensively explores modern Europe's fixation with eugenic programmes of racial and national purification. It convincingly demonstrates that between 1870 and 1940 eugenicists were not only preoccupied with rescuing the individual from the anomie of modernity but equally championed a glorious racial destiny for the nation.

Modernism and Eugenics must be recommended to anyone who would like to discover the contents of eugenics; who aspires to understand the way in which it became a political catalyst aimed at controlling and managing the phenomenon of disability in the first decades of the twentieth century; or who simply is interested in finding out the origin of some of the ways disabled people were perceived, ways that regrettably still remain too alive in some sectors of contemporary societies. (José Martinez-Pérez, H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences Online, networks.h-net.org, June, 2016)Is definitely a milestone book, not only as an overview of the European discourse of eugenics, but for our understanding of eugenics as a fundamental part of European history in the twentieth century ... . (Björn Michael Felder, Historische Zeitschrift)A stimulating challenge to think more precisely about the role of scientific research in the development of eugenic policies and about the place of eugenics in the broader picture of social politics.' (Nils Roll-Hansen, Metascience)Turda's book offers a very concise primer on the discourse of eugenics for scholars interested in the transnational character of eugenics in Europe in the turbulent years of 1870-1940 ... . (Routledge ABES June 2011)

Autorentext
MARIUS TURDA is Deputy Director, Centre for Health, Medicine and Society, Oxford Brookes University, UK, founder of the international Working Group on the History of Race and Eugenics (Oxford Brookes), and the series editor of Studies in the History of Medicine with CEU Press in Budapest. He has published widely on the comparative history of eugenics and race.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Introduction: Context and Methodology The Pathos of Science, 1870-1914 War: The World's Only Hygiene, 1914-1918 Eugenic Technologies of National Improvement, 1918-1933 Eugenics and Biopolitics, 1933-1940 Conclusion: Towards an Epistemology of Eugenic Knowledge Selected Bibliography Index