Social bodies : science, reproduction, and Italian modernity / David G. Horn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horn, David G., 1958-

Series:

Princeton studies in culture/power/history.

Princeton studies in culture/power/history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human body--Social aspects--Italy.

Human body.

Human body--Symbolic aspects--Italy.

Fertility, Human--Government policy--Italy.

Fertility, Human.

Fascism and culture--Italy.

Fascism and culture.

Fascism and women--Italy.

Fascism and women.

Human reproductive technology--Italy--History--20th century.

Human reproductive technology.

Italy--Politics and government--1914-1945.

Italy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (203 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1994.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Using as his example post-World War I Italy and the government's interest in the size, growth rate, and "vitality" of its national population, David Horn suggests a genealogy for our present understanding of procreation as a site for technological intervention and political contestation. Social Bodies looks at how population and reproductive bodies came to be the objects of new sciences, technologies, and government policies during this period. It examines the linked scientific constructions of Italian society as a body threatened by the "disease" of infertility, and of women and men as social bodies--located neither in nature nor in the private sphere, but in that modern domain of knowledge and intervention carved out by statistics, sociology, social hygiene, and social work. Situated at the intersection of anthropology, cultural studies, and feminist studies of science, the book explores the interrelated factors that produced the practices of reason we call social science and social planning. David Horn draws on many sources to analyze the discourses and practices of "social experts," the resistance these encountered, and the often unintended effects of the new objectification of bodies and populations. He shows how science, while affirming that maternity was part of woman's "nature," also worked to remove reproduction from the domain of the natural, making it an object of technological intervention. This reconstitution of bodies through the sciences and technologies of the social, Horn argues, continues to have material consequences for women and men throughout the West.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

CHAPTER I. Technologies of Reproduction

CHAPTER II. Social Bodies

CHAPTER III. The Power of Numbers

CHAPTER IV. Governing Reproduction

CHAPTER V. The Sterile City

CHAPTER VI. Beyond Public and Private

Notes

References Cited

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 159-181) and index.

ISBN:

9786612752049

9781400803828

1400803829

9781282752047

1282752049

9781400821457

1400821452

OCLC:

681193698