| Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Project in the Green Mountain State Contributor(s): Gallagher, Nancy L. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0874519527 ISBN-13: 9780874519525 Publisher: University Press of New England OUR PRICE: $28.45 Product Type: Paperback Published: August 1999 Annotation: Eugenics -- the study of human racial progress through selective breeding -- frequently invokes images of social engineering, virulent racism, immigrant persecution, and Nazi genocide, but Vermont's little known adventure in eugenics shows the inherent adaptability of eugenics theory and methods to parochial social justice. Beginning with genealogies of Vermont's rural poor in the 1920s, and concluding in the 1930s with an expose of ethnic prejudice in Vermont's largest city, this story of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont explores the scope, limits, and changing interpretations of eugenics in America and offers a new approach to the history of progressive politics and social reform in New England. Inspired and directed by Zoology Professor Henry F. Perkins, the survey, through social research, political agitation, and education campaigns, infused eugenic agendas into progressive programs for child welfare, mental health, and rural community development. Breeding Better Vermonters examines social, ethnic, and religious tensions and reveals how population studies, theories of human heredity, and a rhetoric of altruism became subtle, yet powerful tools of social control and exclusion in a state whose motto was "freedom and unity." |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Sociology - General - Science | Life Sciences - Genetics & Genomics - History | United States - State & Local - General |
| Dewey: 363.920 |
| LCCN: 99029717 |
| Series: Revisiting New England: The New Regionalism |
| Physical Information: 0.76" H x 6.05" W x 9.07" (0.94 lbs) 253 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - New England - Geographic Orientation - Vermont |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Eugenics -- the study of human racial progress through selective breeding -- frequently invokes images of social engineering, virulent racism, immigrant persecution, and Nazi genocide, but Vermont's little known adventure in eugenics shows the inherent adaptability of eugenics theory and methods to parochial social justice. Beginning with genealogies of Vermont's rural poor in the 1920s, and concluding in the 1930s with an expos of ethnic prejudice in Vermont's largest city, this story of the Eugenics Survey of Vermont explores the scope, limits, and changing interpretations of eugenics in America and offers a new approach to the history of progressive politics and social reform in New England. Inspired and directed by Zoology Professor Henry F. Perkins, the survey, through social research, political agitation, and education campaigns, infused eugenic agendas into progressive programs for child welfare, mental health, and rural community development. Breeding Better Vermonters examines social, ethnic, and religious tensions and reveals how population studies, theories of human heredity, and a rhetoric of altruism became subtle, yet powerful tools of social control and exclusion in a state whose motto was freedom and unity. |