Medical imperialism in French North Africa : regenerating the Jewish community of colonial Tunis / Richard C. Parks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parks, Richard C., author.

Series:

France overseas.

France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jews--Tunisia--Tunis--Social conditions--20th century.

Jews.

Jews--Health and hygiene--Tunisia--Tunis.

Public health--Tunisia--History--French occupation, 1881-1956.

Public health.

Tunis (Tunisia)--Social conditions--20th century.

Tunis (Tunisia).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (198 pages) : illustrations, maps.

Place of Publication:

Lincoln, [Nebraska] ; London, [England] : University of Nebraska Press, 2017.

Summary:

French-colonial Tunisia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed shifting concepts of identity, including varying theories of ethnic essentialism, a drive toward “modernization,” and imperialist interpretations of science and medicine. As French colonizers worked to realize ideas of a “modern” city and empire, they undertook a program to significantly alter the physical and social realities by which the people of Tunisia lived, often in ways that continue to influence life today.Medical Imperialism in French North Africa demonstrates the ways in which diverse members of the Jewish community of Tunis received, rejected, or reworked myriad imperial projects devised to foster the social, corporeal, and moral “regeneration” of their community. Buttressed by the authority of science and medicine, regenerationist schemes such as urban renewal projects and public health reforms were deployed to destroy and recast the cultural, social, and political lives of Jewish colonial subjects. Richard C. Parks expands on earlier scholarship to examine how notions of race, class, modernity, and otherness shaped these efforts. Looking at such issues as the plasticity of identity, the collaboration and contention between French and Tunisian Jewish communities, Jewish women's negotiation of social power relationships in Tunis, and the razing of the city's Jewish quarter, Parks fills the gap in current literature by focusing on the broader transnational context of French actions in colonial Tunisia.

Contents:

Situating regeneration: medicine, science, and "modern" bodies

Regenerating space: destruction and divided communities

Regenerating space, part 2: not all ghettoes are the same

Regenerating youth: the role of the alliance and the rise of Zionism

Regenerating women: the assertion of reproductive control

Conclusion: a brief reflection on identity.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781496202871

1496202872

9781496202895

1496202899

OCLC:

978352057