Renwick, Chris orcid.org/0000-0001-9672-6671 (2016) Eugenics, Population Research, and Social Mobility Studies in Early and Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain. The Historical Journal. pp. 845-867. ISSN 1469-5103
Abstract
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 postwar 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.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015, Cambridge University Press. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > History (York) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number AHRC UNSPECIFIED |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 27 Jan 2016 13:54 |
Last Modified: | 03 Apr 2025 23:09 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X1500028X |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/S0018246X1500028X |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:94187 |
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