Sociology 2266A/B Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Soroptimist International, Reichsmark, Eugenics
26 Jul 2020
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Positivist influences on politics and policy
• Late C19th and early C20th, the causal link between genetics and crime was accepted as
‘scientific truth’.
• Researchers believed that genes were responsible for crime and that susceptibility to crime
could be identified by physiological features.
• 1920 onwards: US, Canada and Europe introduced compulsory sterilisation of various
‘problematic’ groups.
• People were sterilized for the good of society. Picture of Carrie Buck and her mother Emma.
Emma was committed to Lynchburg Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, after her husband
had left her during her pregnancy. The baby Carrie was fostered. When she was 16 Carrie was
raped by the nephew of the family who were looking after her and she became pregnant. Carrie
Buck was forcibly sterilised after the birth of her baby as the family who were looking after her
stated that she had always been ‘peculiar’ since birth.
• Carrie Buck fitted their stereotype of a “feebleminded” girl. She was poor, pregnant, and
uneducated.
• Evidence from the Eugenics record office stated: This girl comes from a shiftless, ignorant, and
worthless class of people and it is impossible to get intelligent and satisfactory data, though I
have had Miss Wilhelm, of the Red Cross of Charlottesville, try to work out her [family] line. But
Mental defectiveness was evidenced by failure of mental development, having chronological
age of 18 years, with a mental age of 9 years, according to Stanford Revision of Binet-
Simon Test:
• Later she was judged to be of normal intelligence.
Eugenics and Nazi Germany
• Eugenics: The study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial
quality of future generations.
• ‘The holocaust was the extreme of a range of positivist discourses which spoke of the need to
take scientific action to grapple with the social problem of crime, imbecility, feeblemindedness,
the reproduction of the poor and the wretchedness of the lowest strata of society.’ (Morrison
1997 p204)
Context
• Economic collapse of Germany post ww1
• Belief in Darwin’s notion that evolutionary processes would occur by eliminating the weak. The
survival of the fittest.
• Keen to promote his idea of the superiority of the ‘Aryan race’, Hitler encouraged the
implementation of a national programme of race hygiene.
• Key element was involuntary sterilisation of feeble minded, mentally ill, epileptics and alcoholics
in 1934, and prevention of unions between Jews and Aryans.
Document Summary
Late c19th and early c20th, the causal link between genetics and crime was accepted as. Scientific truth": researchers believed that genes were responsible for crime and that susceptibility to crime could be identified by physiological features, 1920 onwards: us, canada and europe introduced compulsory sterilisation of various. Problematic" groups: people were sterilized for the good of society. Picture of carrie buck and her mother emma. Emma was committed to lynchburg colony for epileptics and feebleminded, after her husband had left her during her pregnancy. When she was 16 carrie was raped by the nephew of the family who were looking after her and she became pregnant. Buck was forcibly sterilised after the birth of her baby as the family who were looking after her stated that she had always been peculiar" since birth: carrie buck fitted their stereotype of a feebleminded girl.
