The cultivation of whiteness : science, health and racial destiny in Australia / Warwick Anderson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Anderson, W. P. (Warwick P.)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social medicine--Australia--History--19th century.

Social medicine.

White people--Medical care--Australia--History--19th century.

White people.

White people--Race identity--Australia--History--19th century.

White people--Race identity.

History.

Medical care.

Australia.

Physical Description:

ix, 390 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Basic Books, [2003]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

The Temperate South

1 Antipodean Britons 11

2 A Cultivated Society 41

The Northern Tropics

3 No Place for a White Man 73

4 The Making of the Tropical White Man 95

5 White Triumph in the Tropics? 139

6 Whitening the Nation 165

Aboriginal Australia

7 From Deserts the Prophets Come 191

8 The Reproductive Frontier 225

Conclusion: Biology and Nation 253.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-379) and index.

ISBN:

0465003052

OCLC:

51020410