0000000001229070
AUTHOR
Valentina Erasmo
Norman Edwin Himes's "Eugenics and Democracy: A Call to Action" (1939). The Eugenic Manifesto of a Devote Carverian
This note presents an unpublished 1939 address given by the American sociologist and population specialist Norman Edwin Himes on "Eugenics and Democracy: A Call to Action. Himes's discussion of eugenics and democracy has a two-fold relevance. First, it provides further evidence that among population studies specialists a generalized commitment to eugenics persisted well beyond the era of the so-called Progressive Era and continued throughout the 1930s. Second, Himes's approach reveals an attempt to reformulate a eugenic agenda along "liberal" lines, which was intended to distance him from the coercive and racialist approach of his progressive predecessors. Yet, it will be shown, even though…
HEREDITARIANISM, EUGENICS, AND AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE INTERWAR YEARS: MEET THE CARVERIANS
Like other Progressive Era reformers, Thomas Nixon Carver promoted a form of biology-infused social science that included both eugenics and a strong version of hereditarianism. Carver was also a charismatic teacher who trained several generations of economists and sociologists at Harvard. In this paper we will focus on the contribution of three of them: James A. Field, Norman E. Himes, and Carl S. Joslyn. These authors differ in terms of style, method, and emphasis—with Field and Himes more interested in population and birth control issues, and Joslyn in the dynamics of social stratification. As it will be shown below, however, all of them reveal an explicit commitment to hereditarianism an…