Full Description
Based on previously unexplored archival documentation, this book offers the first general overview of the history of Italian eugenics, not limited to the decades of Fascist regime, but instead ranging from the beginning of the 1900s to the first half of the 1970s. Discusses several fundamental themes of the comparative history of eugenics: the importance of the Latin eugenic model; the relationship between eugenics and fascism; the influence of Catholicism on the eugenic discourse and the complex links between genetics and eugenics. It examines the Liberal pre-fascist period and the post-WW2 transition from fascist and racial eugenics to medical and human genetics. As far as fascist eugenics is concerned, the book provides a refreshing analysis, considering Italian eugenics as the most important case-study in order to define Latin eugenics as an alternative model to its Anglo-American, German and Scandinavian counterparts. Analyses in detail the nature-nurture debate during the State racist campaign in fascist Italy (1938-1943) as a boundary tool in the contraposition between the different institutional, political and ideological currents of fascist racism.
Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction CHAPTER I Between Lombroso and Pareto: the Italian Way to Eugenics 1. Lombroso's Way: the Problem of Degeneration 2. Pareto's Way: the Problem of the Elite 3. The Italian Committee of Eugenic Studies CHAPTER II Eugenics and Dysgenics of War 1. The War as Counter-selection 2. The War as Gymnasium 3. The War as Laboratory 4. Eugenics and the "Sons of the Enemy" CHAPTER III Regenerating Italy (1919-1924) 1. Ettore Levi and the IPAS Campaign for Birth Control 2. A Concrete Proposal: Premarital Certificates 3. Sterilization and Euthanasia 4. The Work of the "Useless": Mental Hygiene in Italy CHAPTER IV Quality through Quantity: Eugenics in Fascist Italy 1. Corrado Gini's Hegemony 2. Constitutionalism and Latin Eugenics 3. Demography and Biotypology CHAPTER V Eugenics and Racism (1938-1943) 1. Biological Racism and Hereditarian Eugenics 2. Environmentalist Eugenics 3. Esoteric-traditionalist Racism and Eugenics 4. Assortative Mating and Racism 5. Toward a National Genetic Center CHAPTER VI Toward a New Eugenics 1. SIGE Schisms 2. From Premarital Examination to Genetic Counseling 3. Eugenics and Catholic Medical Genetics CHAPTER VII Against UNESCO: Italian Eugenics and American Scientific Racism 1. The IAAEE and The Mankind Quarterly (1959-1965) 2. Meticciato di Guerra: Luigi Gedda and Reginald Ruggles Gates 3. Corrado Gini and the "Guerrilla War" against UNESCO 4. Epilogue: "Race and Modern Science" Conclusions Bibliography Index
