Abstract
The history of eugenics has been one of the most dynamic and challenging areas within the history of biology offering critical new perspectives in modern social history. Eugenics offered modern, scientifically based “solutions” to crime, poverty, and social deviancy. The eugenics discourse became complex with diverse positions on the questions of race, birth control entitlement, and welfare benefits. From a methodological point of view, discourse risks ignoring how context and social processes shape meaning, overlooks issues of impact, and can amount to little more than an old-fashioned narrative of intellectual progress. One challenge is to look beyond discourse to such social processes as professionalization and the construction of welfare institutions and practices. Eugenics provides insight into wider social transformations showing how science represented differing social agendas.
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Weindling, P. (2021). The History and Historiography of Eugenics. In: Dietrich, M.R., Borrello, M.E., Harman, O. (eds) Handbook of the Historiography of Biology. Historiographies of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90119-0_9
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