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 115
... skin and found that when both were placed in the sunlight , the brown skin caused the mercury to rise further.90 The surprising possibility that colour was a disadvantage in the tropics inspired Young to conduct biochemical analyses of the ...
... skin and found that when both were placed in the sunlight , the brown skin caused the mercury to rise further.90 The surprising possibility that colour was a disadvantage in the tropics inspired Young to conduct biochemical analyses of the ...
Page 141
... skin . Breinl and W. J. Young had learned from bitter experience that ' the dress material becomes more and more impregnated with moisture , and the meshes of the fabric clogged with water , and the degree of saturation between skin and ...
... skin . Breinl and W. J. Young had learned from bitter experience that ' the dress material becomes more and more impregnated with moisture , and the meshes of the fabric clogged with water , and the degree of saturation between skin and ...
Page 204
... skin to reduce heat loss . As conditions became cooler , the Aboriginal subjects limited their skin circulation long before whites did . Hicks believed that this ability was a ' biological adaptation ' , one that whites living in the ...
... skin to reduce heat loss . As conditions became cooler , the Aboriginal subjects limited their skin circulation long before whites did . Hicks believed that this ability was a ' biological adaptation ' , one that whites living in the ...
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