Our own master race : eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945 / / Angus McLaren

• Autore: McLaren Angus
• Pubblicazione: Toronto, Ontario ; ; Buffalo, New York ; ; London, England : , : University of Toronto Press, , 2014; ©1990
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (232 p.)
• Disciplina: 363.9/2/0971
• Soggetto topico: Eugenics - Canada - History - 20th century
• Soggetto geografico: Canada
• Soggetto genere / forma: History; Electronic books.
• Note generali: Includes index.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: The birth of biological politics -- Public health and hereditarian concerns -- Stemming the flood of defective aliens -- Sex, science, and race betterment -- Creating a haven for human thoroughbreds -- The eugenics society of Canada -- Genetics, eugenics, and human pedigress -- The death of eugenics?
• Sommario/riassunto: Was Canada immune to the racist currents of thought that swept central Europe in the 1920's and 1930's? In this landmark book Angus McLaren, co-author of The Bedroom and the State, examines the pervasiveness in Canada of the eugenic notion of "race betterment" and demonstrates that many Canadians believed that radical measures were justified to protect the community from the "degenerate." The sterilization of the feeble-minded in Alberta and British Columbia was merely the most dramatic attempt to limit the numbers of the "unfit." But in the decades prior to World War Two, eugenic preoccupations were to colour discussions of immigration restriction, birth control, mental testing, family allowances, and a host of similar social policies. Doctors, psychiatrists, geneticists, social workers, and mental hygienists provided an anxious Canadian middle class with the reassuring argument that poverty, crime, prostitution, and mental retardation were primarily the products of defective genes, not a defective social system. In explaining why biological solutions were sought for social problems McLaren not only provides a provocative reappraisal of the ideas and activities of a generation of feminists, political progressives, and public health propagandists but he also explores some of the roots of our not-so-latent racist tendencies.
• Titolo autorizzato: Our own master race
• ISBN: 1-4426-5587-9; 1-4426-2331-4
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Record Nr.: 9910819558503321
• Lo trovi qui: Univ. Federico II
• Serie: Canadian social history series.