The Meaning of Eugenics: Reflections on the Government of Genetic Knowledge in the Past and the Present

Abstract

Argument

The recent development of molecular genetics has created concern that society may experience a new eugenics. Notions about eugenics and what took place in the 1930s and 1940s are actively shaping questions about which uses of the new genetics should be considered illegitimate. Drawing upon a body of historiographical literature on Scandinavian eugenics, this paper argues that the dominant view of eugenics as morally and scientifically illegitimate is not tenable when it comes to the uses of compulsion, political motivation, and scientific acceptability. In spite of a general condemnation of eugenics, health authorities today are trying to prevent individuals with deviant behavior from reproducing or at least from rearing children. This may not be argued with reference to the risk of transmitting defective genes, but rather the risk of producing undesirable social problems. Drawing on a Foucauldian approach, the paper concludes that eugenics and new genetics should be seen as two historically specific forms of biopower.