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 6
... scientists and bureaucrats were left defending the project - most researchers had moved on . My general argu- ment to this point is that virile , energetic whiteness was defined in nineteenth - century Australia largely in relation to ...
... scientists and bureaucrats were left defending the project - most researchers had moved on . My general argu- ment to this point is that virile , energetic whiteness was defined in nineteenth - century Australia largely in relation to ...
Page 184
... Scientists had discovered a whiteness of a truly different colour and quality , associated with a different mentality and spirituality , and distinguished by a close relationship with place and circum- stance - in fact , it seemed to be ...
... Scientists had discovered a whiteness of a truly different colour and quality , associated with a different mentality and spirituality , and distinguished by a close relationship with place and circum- stance - in fact , it seemed to be ...
Page 245
... scientists , public health officers , and later , physical anthropologists , were experts in bodily reform and race hygiene , and therefore they also could represent them- selves as experts in white citizenship and national destiny ...
... scientists , public health officers , and later , physical anthropologists , were experts in bodily reform and race hygiene , and therefore they also could represent them- selves as experts in white citizenship and national destiny ...
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