Eugenics, Population Research, and Social Mobility Studies in Early and Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7102899 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chris Renwick (0000-0001-9672-6671, University of York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 59 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 845-867 |
| Publication date | 2015-12-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x1500028x |
| OpenAlex | W2282142480 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 25 |
Eugenics and sociology are often considered polar opposites, with the former seen as a pseudo-science that reduces everything to genes and the other a progressive social science focused on the environment. However, the situation was not quite so straightforward in mid-twentieth-century Britain. As this article shows, eugenics had a number of important formative intellectual, institutional, and methodological impacts on ideas and practices that would find a home in the rapidly expanding and diversifying discipline of sociology after the Second World War. Taking in the careers of leading individuals, including Alexander Carr-Saunders, William Beveridge, Julian Huxley, and David Glass, and focusing on the relationship between eugenics, ‘population research’, and the emerging field of social mobility studies, the article highlights the significant but underappreciated influence interwar biosocial thinking had on intellectual, scientific, and political cultures in post-war Britain. In so doing, the article draws on recent scholarship on the ‘technical identity’ embedded in mid-century British social science, which, it is suggested, provided the link between the research under consideration and the progressive politics of those who carried it out
Biosocial theory · Eugenics · Identity (music · Political science · Politics · Population · Psychoanalysis · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Gender Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Race, Genetics, and Society
Toward More Accurate and Inclusive Surveying
Beyond the ‘Scholarship Boy’ paradigm
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What else can you expect from class-ridden Britain?’
Class Divisions in Use
Verdicts on Hans Eysenck and the fluxing context of British psychology
Taxonomical lives
A New Social Mobility? The political redefinition of a sociological problem
The history of Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution
Surveying the meritocracy
Eugenics from the New Deal to the Great Society
DoppelgäNgers and Racists
Completing the Circle of the Social Sciences? William Beveridge and Social Biology at London School of Economics during the 1930s
Notes on Some Probable Consequences of the Advent of a Stationary Population in Great Britain
Interchange between Social Classes
Eugenics and Progressive Thought
Eugenics And Social Policy Between The Wars
The rhetoric of Eugenics
Patrick Geddes
A Child of the Empire
Eugenics, socialism and artificial insemination
Demographic Research in Britain 1936-1986
Victor Branford and the Building of British Sociology
Populating Sociology
Processes of Secularisation
A Path Better Not to Have Been Taken
The Price of the Ticket
The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,17 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2025 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |