The Cultivation Of Whiteness: Science, Health, And Racial Destiny In Australia - Hardcover

Anderson, Warwick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465003052 ISBN 13: 9780465003051

Publisher: Basic Books, 2003

Synopsis

In nineteenth-century Australia, the main commentators on race and biological differences were doctors. But the medical profession entertained serious anxieties about the possibility of "racial denigration" of the white population in the new land, and medical and social scientists violated ethics and principles in pursuit of a more homogenized Australia. The Cultivation of Whiteness examines the notions of "whiteness" and racism, and introduces a whole new framework for discussion of the development of medicine and science. Warwick Anderson provides the first full account of the shocking experimentation in the 1920s and '30s on Aboriginal people of the central deserts -- the Australian equivalent of the infamous Tuskegee Experiment. Lucid and entertaining throughout, this pioneering historical survey of ideas will help to reshape debate on race, ethnicity, citizenship, and environment everywhere.

About this title

About the Author

Warwick Anderson is Director of the History of Health Sciences Program and Vice Chair of the Department of Anthropology, History, and Social Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Australia, he now lives in San Francisco.

Reviews

Anderson, an Australian now teaching the history of health sciences at the University of California, meticulously chronicles scientific ideas about race in Australia from the early 1800s through WWII, in the context of changing models of disease, new theories about heredity and the continent's maturation from a colony into a nation. As experts on the body, physicians and medical scientists claimed expertise on issues of race. During the frontier days, Australia's environment appeared hostile to British bodies, and physicians recommended guidelines for diet, clothing, housing and hygiene. Even after the acceptance of the germ theory in the 1880s, Anderson argues, physicians continued to link personal and racial health to an Anglo-European Protestant ideal of civilized, moral conduct. Contrasting this ideal with the habits of allegedly germ-infested "colored races," they called for the containment of Aboriginals and restricted immigration for Asians and Pacific Islanders. In the same way, evolution and genetics in the early 20th century were evoked to justify eugenic intervention. Anderson detects a shift in attitudes during the 1920s and '30s, when, he reports, comparative studies led to the unexpected conclusion that whites and Aboriginals were both Caucasian. Hopefully, if rather unconvincingly, Anderson presents this idea as a first step toward multiculturalism and self-determination. Though serious intellectual history, daunting even for academic readers, Anderson's monograph on the pressing topic of race merits attention. B&w photos.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465003052
• ISBN 13: 9780465003051
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400