The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in AustraliaIn this lucid and original book, Warwick Anderson offers the first comprehensive history of Australian medical and scientific ideas about race and place. In nineteenth-century Australia, the main commentators on race and biological differences were doctors. The medical profession entertained serious anxieties about 'racial degeneration' of the white population in the new land. They feared non-white races as reservoirs of disease, and they held firm beliefs on the baneful influence of the tropics on the health of Europeans. Gradually these matters became the province of public health and biological science. In the 1930s anthropologists claimed 'race' as their special interest, until eventually the edifice of racial classification collapsed under its own proliferating contradictions. The Cultivation of Whiteness examines the notion of 'whiteness' as a flexible category in scientific and public debates. This is the first time such an analytic framework has been used anywhere in the history of medicine or of science. Anderson also provides the first full account of experimentation in the 1920s and 1930s on Aboriginal people in the central deserts. This very readable book draws on European and American work on the development of racial thought and on thehistory of representations of the body. As the first extensive (and entertaining) historical survey of ideas about the peopling of Australia, it will help to reshape debate on race, ethnicity, citizenship and environment. |
From inside the book
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Page 42
... less like an epidemiological anomaly and more like a model for all ailments . In other words , medical doctors had become less inclined to map the physico - moral disease topography than to trace a socio - moral dis- tribution of ...
... less like an epidemiological anomaly and more like a model for all ailments . In other words , medical doctors had become less inclined to map the physico - moral disease topography than to trace a socio - moral dis- tribution of ...
Page 67
... less unfastened from environment , nurture and habit . The most ' advanced ' members of the profession were gradually coming to favour a less environmentally nuanced view of the body , a more persistent and impervious hereditary ...
... less unfastened from environment , nurture and habit . The most ' advanced ' members of the profession were gradually coming to favour a less environmentally nuanced view of the body , a more persistent and impervious hereditary ...
Page 188
... less fatal than the white man's musket ' . As a result , the last full - blood Tas- manian died in 1877.30 Edward B. Tylor , the professor of anthropology at Oxford and a correspondent of Roth , declared in 1890 that the Tasmanians ...
... less fatal than the white man's musket ' . As a result , the last full - blood Tas- manian died in 1877.30 Edward B. Tylor , the professor of anthropology at Oxford and a correspondent of Roth , declared in 1890 that the Tasmanians ...
Contents
Antipodean Britons | 11 |
A Cultivated Society | 41 |
The Northern Tropics | 51 |
Copyright | |
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The Cultivation Of Whiteness: Science, Health, And Racial Destiny In Australia Warwick Anderson No preview available - 2003 |
Common terms and phrases
Aboriginal adaptation Adelaide American anthropology appeared Australian Aborigines became become believed biological Birdsell blood body Breinl British Caucasian cause century character Charles Cilento circumstances civilisation Cleland climate colonial coloured communities concern constitution continued culture Darwin degeneration disease doctors early effects environment especially establishment Eugenics European experience fever geographical germs half-caste History human hygiene Ibid immigrant influence Institute interest James John labour land later less living London measures Melbourne mental native natural North northern observed origin physical physiological political population practice preventive problem public health Queensland racial relation remained reported result Science scientific scientists seemed settlement social Society South South Wales southern suggested Sydney Taylor temperate Territory theories thought Tindale Townsville Tropical Australia Tropical Medicine University Press Victoria white Australia white race wrote Young