Search results for "Social Darwinism"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
Social Darwinism, the British Labour Party, and the First World War
2021
This article investigates whether the doctrine of social Darwinism had any bearing on the Labour Party’s decision to support Britain’s participation in the First World War. Many socialist intellect...
La Educación Física Escolar en Tres Centros Educativos de Chile: una Caracterización de sus Prácticas Docentes
2016
Physical Education (PE) generally, and Chilean one, specifically, is in the middle of an identity crisis. There is a vision of the body as a production object. This vision has been generated in the light of social Darwinism, and at the same time there are other more conciliatory and global approaches. This investigation tries, with a holistic approach based on participating observation, to look into the practices carried out in relation to PE in schools in the Chilean context. The main conclusion from the analysis carried out is that in schools, PE is mainly focused on “doing” and on the production of results that can later on be assessed with objectivity. This means that schools are still …
‘Happy amicable co-operation’: mutual aid, anarchism and the image of the bee in the work of Louisa Sarah Bevington
2017
AbstractThe poet and political activist Louisa Sarah Bevington has been largely ignored in accounts of late Victorian literary and cultural history, even though her work presents a singular nexus of scientific, socio-cultural and poetical perspectives. This essay will show how Bevington juxtaposes Social Darwinist interpretations of the theory of evolution, which foreground the idea of human life as a struggle for existence, with the anarcho-communist view proposed by Peter Kropotkin, which foregrounds the human capacity for sympathy and mutual aid as the driving forces in social development. After situating Kropotkin’s ideas within the larger context of anarchist and evolutionist thinking,…
Charles Darwin and ideology : rethinking the Darwinian revolution
2016
This short paper critiques the idea of any coherent Darwinian ideology. Charles Darwin himself did not adopt any obvious ideology, except perhaps that of anti-slavery. However, his published work, and that of other evolutionists, led to the emergence of social Darwinism. Herbert Spencer’s role in fostering social Darwinism, and the rise of eugenics, are briefly described. The connection, if any, between the historical figure of Darwin and the social movement that bears his name is discussed. While Darwin’s On the origin of species or The descent of man can hardly account for all the racial stereotyping, nationalism, or political bigotry seen in the half century after his death, there can be…