Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | 'For the Sake of Race': Eugenic Discourses of Feeblemindedness and Motherhood in the South African Medical Record, 1903-1926 |
Author: | Klausen, Susanne |
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. |