A Human Garden
French Policy and the Transatlantic Legacies of Eugenic Experimentation
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Berghahn Books
Publishing:1st Jan '27
£27.95
This title is due to be published on 1st January, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£104.00(9781789205435)
The history of eugenics has traditionally been associated with genetics and biology. In this path-breaking book, Paul-André Rosental thoroughly revises this interpretation by showing that eugenics was just as closely connected to the history of psychology. Far from disappearing after the defeat of Nazism, eugenics has continued to exert an influence into the present through the psychology of personal development and liberal-democratic ideals of personal fulfilment.
This extraordinarily original and deeply researched book demonstrates this by tracing an experiment conducted in France until the 1980s that became both a model and a source of hope for eugenicists around the world. By examining the reasons for its support by public authorities, Rosental reconstructs the enduring influence that eugenics, beginning with the New Deal, exercised over the expansion of public policies on both sides of the Atlantic.
“With skills and empathy, Rosental integrates his story into the broader debate about French eugenics during the twentieth century. Within that context, Rosental pushes both conceptual and chronological boundaries…As we continue to debate the legacies of eugenics, this is an important study. It should pave the way for further research into how the obsession with desirable eugenic traits in the population shaped public health, social assistance and welfare policies during the second part of the twentieth century and beyond.”• Cultural and Social History
“Paul-André Rosental has recovered each of the threads that led to this remarkable experiment … we discover piece by piece, within the history of Ungemach Gardens, the scientific and moral wellsprings of eugenics.”• Le Monde
“[The book’s] wide-ranging and provocative insights ought to fuel real reflection about twentieth-century eugenics’ living legacies. Scholars of housing, municipal planning, social welfare policy, psychology, and demography, both in France and elsewhere, will find much here to ponder.”• Journal of Modern History
“A richly detailed micro-history … Rosental manages to give us in considerable detail the local and the national contexts that makes sense of this extraordinary experiment on the one hand, but never to fall into the trap of national exceptionalism in so doing.”• Philippa Levine
“Historian Paul-André Rosental has delivered a genuine historical scoop. In beautiful prose, A Human Garden correlates the factual record with intellectual history and shows how eugenics suffused the development of policies for managing and protecting populations.”• L’Obs
ISBN: 9781807681814
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
248 pages