The races of Europe : construction of national identities in the social sciences, 1839-1939
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London : Palgrave Macmillan, 2016
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MCMAHON, Richard, The races of Europe : construction of national identities in the social sciences, 1839-1939, London : Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/93029
Abstract
This book explores a vital but neglected chapter in the histories of nationalism, racism and science. It is the first comprehensive study of the transnational scientific community that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries attempted to classify Europe's biological races. Anthropological race classifiers produced parallel geographies, histories and hierarchies of European peoples that were crucial to the creation of national identities and to the overtly political race discourses of eugenics and popular racist ideologues. They lent nationalism the invaluable prestige of natural science, and traced the histories, conflicts and relationships of ‘national races’ back into prehistory. Racial national character stereotypes meanwhile supported competing political ideologies. The book examines the interplay between class, gender and national identity narratives and the tensions and interactions between the scientific and political agendas of classifiers. Within the elaborate transnational networks of scientific communities, for example, they had to reconcile competing national narratives.
Table of Contents
-- 1 Introduction: Rediscovering a Lost Science
-- Part I Networks, Methods and Narratives
-- 2 Race Classifiers and Anthropologists
-- 3 How Classification Worked
-- 4 European Race Classifications: Anthropology, Ethnicity and Politics
-- Part II Peripheral Case Studies
-- 5 The Irish Dilemma: Nineteenth-Century Science and Celtic Identity
-- 6 Poland: Scientific Independence and Nordicism
-- 7 Between International Science and Nationalism: Interwar
-- 8 Conclusion
-- Epilogue
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Published online: 15 November 2016
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Published version of EUI PhD thesis, 2007