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Eugenics and Ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Michael Freeden
Michael Freeden
Affiliation:
Mansfield College, Oxford
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Extract

In a recent communication to the Historical Journal, Greta Jones submitted a critique that was largely a commentary on my article ‘Eugenics and progressive thought: a study in ideological affinity’. I am taking the liberty of replying not only because my views have been seriously misrepresented by Dr Jones but also because I believe that she has failed to appreciate important questions of methodology that transcend the particular subject of eugenics and are worth further elaboration. I shall relate in turn to the issues she raises.

Type
Communications
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1983 , pp. 959 - 962
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 Greta, Jones, ‘Eugenics and social policy between the wars’, Historical Journal, xxv, 3 (1982), 717–28.Google Scholar My article appeared in Historical Journal, XXII, 3 (1979), 645–71.Google Scholar

2 See e.g., Searle, G. R., ‘Eugenics and politics in Britain in the 1930s’, Annals of Science, XXXVI (1979), 159–69;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMackenzie, D., ‘Sociobiologies in competition: the biometrician-Mendelian debate’ in Webster, C. (ed.), Biology, medicine and society 1840–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 243–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Soloway, R. A., Birth control and the population question in England, 1877–1930 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1982).Google Scholar

4 Stevenson, J. and Cook, C., The slump (London, 1977).Google Scholar

5 ‘Eugenics and progressive thought’, pp. 667–8.

6 Searle, ‘Eugenics and politics’, pp. 164–5. See also Werskey, G., The visible college (London, 1978), pp. 96–8 and passim, for interesting observations on the integration of eugenics into Haldane's socialism.Google Scholar

7 Searle, ‘Eugenics and polities’, pp. 163–6, 167–8, 169.

8 See e.g., Hobson, J. A., The problem of the unemployed (London, 1896), pp. 31, 137;Google ScholarHobson, , ‘A new theory of work’, British Friend, XIII (1904);Google ScholarMasterman, C. F. G., ‘The case for the insurance bill’, Nation, 9 Dec. 1911.Google Scholar I have discussed this in detail in my The new liberalism: an ideology of social reform (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar

9 Beveridge, W. H., ‘The problem of the unemployed’, Sociological Papers (1906), 323–31,Google Scholar discussed in my The new liberalism, pp. 184–5. See also Harris, J., William Beveridge: a biography (Oxford, 1977), p. 86 and passim.Google Scholar