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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'For the Sake of Race': Eugenic Discourses of Feeblemindedness and Motherhood in the South African Medical Record, 1903-1926
Author:Klausen, SusanneISNI
Year:1997
Periodical:Journal of Southern African Studies
Volume:23
Issue:1
Period:March
Pages:27-50
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:mothers
race relations
health
psychiatry
Women's Issues
History and Exploration
Health and Nutrition
Ethnic and Race Relations
Politics and Government
Health, Nutrition, and Medicine
Historical/Biographical
research
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637136
Abstract:This paper examines the influence of eugenic beliefs on the English-speaking medical profession in South Africa during the first three decades of the 20th century. It is based on an analysis of two dominant eugenic discourses, those of 'feeblemindedness' and motherhood, uncovered in South Africa's first national medical journal, 'The South African Medical Record', published from 1903 to 1926. Interrogating these discourses serves as an entry point into past processes of change and struggle which were underway in social relations in preapartheid modern South Africa. Medical eugenists shared a number of fundamental assumptions: all demonstrated a concern with the health of the white 'race', and a fear of lower class whites (mainly Afrikaners). They saw a necessary relationship between the health of the population, the role of women as 'mothers of the nation' and the health of the South African State. Consequently, they believed it was their duty to intervene in social relations, including both the public realm of policy development and the private realm of sexuality and reproduction. Notes, ref., sum.
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