Search results for "Eugenic"

The Nazi Connection. Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Stefan Kuhl, New York and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002. 184 pp. …

2003

Economists and Eugenics: Progressive Era Racism and its (Jewish) Discontents

2017

This chapter analyzes the contribution to the debates on labor and immigration of a group of Jewish academicians and reformers who, during the second half of the Progressive Era, explicitly took a stance against the racialist and eugenic rhetoric of the period. This group includes first-rank economists like Edwin R. A. Seligman, Jacob H. Hollander, and Emanuel A. Goldenweiser; influential field specialists such as Isaac A. Hourwich and Isaac M. Rubinow; and relatively less known figures like Max J. Kohler and Samuel K. Joseph. By focusing on the voices of these dissenters, this chapter enriches the emerging picture of Progressive Era eugenic and racial thought.

Wesley Clair Mitchell and the “Illiberal Reformers”: A Documentary Note

2021

In this note we inquire whether Mitchell as a reformer ever expressed concern over the biological quality of individuals and whether he did somehow share the Progressive Era faith in eugenics as an instrument for improving American society’s health, welfare, and morals. This is an aspect of Mitchell’s thought that has received scant attention in the literature and that projects him into the current debate on progressivism.

Eugenesia y autoría moral. Lectura de una tesis habermasiana

2017

El objetivo de esta comunicación es ahondar en la visión que ha mantenido Jürgen Habermas a propósito de la manipulación genética; en concreto, se pretende abordar críticamente su hipótesis de una pérdida de autoría del sujeto manipulado. A juicio del autor, la intervención genética positiva —aquélla que tiene por objeto la introducción de virtuales mejoras en el sujeto— alcanzaría a violar la conciencia de autoría de dicho sujeto, así como su autocomprensión en tanto agente moral. En este sentido, se pretende investigar críticamente dos aspectos diferentes de la cuestión: en primer lugar, la corrección o no de la tesis habermasiana; en segundo lugar, la pertinencia o no de dicha tesis a la…

Reforma sexual, control de natalidad, naturismo y pacifismo. La cultura libertaria trasatlántica en las décadas de 1920 y 1930: Estudios. Revista Ecl…

2019

The editors and main collaborators to the influential Spanish libertarian magazine Estudios (Valencia, 1928-1937) showed a permanent interest in connecting the magazine with the main networks of global anarchism in the interwar years, and also with contemporary international campaigns in defense of birth control, eugenics, sexual reform, naturism or pacifism. As its predecessor did—the magazine Generacion Consciente (1923-1928)—, Estudios was linked to well-known militants, writers, scientists and propagandists in general of those ideas and practices in Europe and America. Estudios built networks using the magazine itself, its personal contacts with those individuals, and also an active boo…

Sexualidad, reproducción y cultura obrera revolucionaria en España: la revista <em>Orto</em> (1932-1934)

2014

Orto. Revista de Documentacion Social, published in Valencia from 1932 to 1934, is a good example of cultural magazines in the Spanish labour movement, particularly in the world of anarcho-syndicalism. Marin Civera, its editor, sought to make Orto (which had a large and diverse range of contributors) a forum for convergence between the different working-class ideologies, united by the ideas of “Syndicalism”. In keeping with its aim to be “social documentation for the proletariat “, the journal took a strong interest in the spread of theory and practice, and debates on, sexual reform, linking these efforts to the international movement for that cause. In addition to the struggle for a new se…

BETWEEN PROGRESSIVISM AND INSTITUTIONALISM: ALBERT BENEDICT WOLFE ON EUGENICS

2013

Albeit concerned with the biological element in social evolution, Albert B. Wolfe was among the very few economists of the progressive era who openly expressed his concerns about certain implications of eugenic rhetoric for the social science. Specifically, Wolfe questioned the strong hereditary boundaries that more extreme eugenicists suggested about human beings. As I will attempt to show in paper, a careful examination of Wolfe’s writings reveals that his reaction was rooted in the belief that many of the social problems which eugenicists attributed to hereditary limitations, were actually imputable to the influence that the social, economic, and physical environment exercised on the ind…

Eugenics and American Economics in the Interwar Years: The Case of Thomas Nixon Carver

2017

The aim of this paper is to explore in some detail Carver’s eugenic ideas with a main, albeit non-exclusive, focus on the interwar years. Although his major contributions had all appeared prior to 1918, Carver remained particularly productive throughout the 1920s and 1930s, publishing several articles and eight books, which include The Principles of National Economy (1921), and The Essential Factors of Social Evolution (1935)—two works which contain significant traces of eugenic reasoning. Just as important, Carver’s interwar activities were not limited to academia. After his retirement from Harvard in 1932 he became involved in the activities of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, while i…

The Assassination of Lieutenant Joe Petrosino: A Contested Symbol in the Mainstream and Italian-American Press in the Early 20th Century

2023

Recently, scholars have looked at the ethnic press through a social constructionist lens, examining the process through which immigrants developed a sense of identity and the role of print culture in forming “imagined communities” (Anderson). Here, I analyze the coverage of the 1909 assassination of police Lieutenant Petrosino in both mainstream and Italian-American press and popular culture. This shocking event ignited a debate over the nature and origin of the Mafia and the dangerousness of the Italian community, a debate involving discourses of racial difference, immigration restriction, and the capability of Italians to assimilate. This debate became an important arena in which Italian …

Survival Value and a Robust, Practical, Joyless Individualism: Thomas Nixon Carver, Social Justice, and Eugenics

2017

The aim of this paper is to provide a compressive assessment of Thomas Nixon Carver's thought—from his early formative years in the 1880s to his post WWII career as a journalist and pamphleteer. The main (albeit not exclusive) focus of this paper will be on the theoretical and philosophical coordinates of Carver's “new liberalism”—his own definition—and how this broad vision was intrinsically connected with an explicitly hierarchical and eugenic approach to human nature. Just as important, what follows is also an attempt to increase our general understanding of the extent in which eugenic considerations permeated the realm of political economy during the first decades of the last century an…