Carolyn Burdett and Angelique Richardson (Guest editors)
The
twenty-first century is seeing a continuous, and increasingly bold, biotechnological
revolution with the potential to do away with one of humankind's most basic
expectations - the expectation of an unmodified genetic inheritance. In
wealthy parts of the world, the processes of human reproduction are being
radically transformed, while some of our most serious diseases are increasingly
seen as predictable and manipulable. But do such technical innovations also
risk bringing a new approach to eugenics into being? Today those with the
ability to pay the price are discovering that genes are a highly desirable
commodity in a new type of consumer culture. The new eugenics is no longer
the state eugenics of the first half of the twentieth century, which sought
public policies that encouraged the 'fittest' to breed, or laws that segregated
the 'feebleminded'. Instead, twenty-first century eugenics is the domain
of informed, wealthy private consumers, looking to maximise their individual
life chances and those of their offspring. This issue re-examines the complex
history of eugenics and explores the extent to which the contemporary focus
on genetics and biotechnology is ushering in a new eugenic future in which
the category of the human is itself fundamentally at risk.
Contributors: Bill Armer, Lucy Bland, Chris Ganchoff, Natalia Gerodetti, John Marks, Lenny Moss, Veronique Mottier, Alan Petersen, Hilary Rose, Barbara Maria Stafford, Gillian Swanson, Elizabeth Siegel Watkins
Cover
image: Adaptation of the logo from the Third International Congress
of Eugenics, August 1932
Carolyn Burdett Introduction: Eugenics Old and New
Hilary Rose Eugenics
and Genetics: the Conjoint Twins?
Elizabeth Siegel Watkins
Parsing the Postmenopausal Pregnancy: a Case Study in the New Eugenics
Véronique Mottier and
Gillian Swanson
Serenity, Self-regard and the Genetic Sequence: Social Psychiatry and Preventive
Eugenics in Britain, 1930s-1950s
Lucy Bland British
Eugenics and 'Race-Crossing': a Study of an Interwar Investigation
Alan Petersen Is
the New Genetics Eugenic?: Interpreting the Past, Envisioning the Future
Bill Armer Eugenetics:
a Polemical View of Social Policy in the Genetic Age
Barbara Maria Stafford Self-eugenics:
the Creeping Illusioning of Identity from Neurobiology to Newgenics
Chris Ganchoff Eugenic
Undergrounds: Stem Cells and Human Futures
John Marks The
New Eugenics: Jacques Testart and French Bioethics
Lenny Moss Contra
Habermas and Towards a Critical Theory of Human Nature and the Question
of Genetic Enhancement
REVIEWS
John Dupré Liberal Eugenics Staffan Müller-Wille Predictive
Genetics and Ethnology Staffan Müller-Wille Diversity and Adversity
Milla Rosenberg Well-born? Kristin Rencher and The Rhetorical Cultures
of Eugenics Marouf Hasian, Jr BOOKNOTES
Michael Calderbank, Joe Brooker, Matt Briggs
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