Anthropology 2290F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Intellectual Disability, Mendelian Inheritance, The Kallikaks

• School: Western University
• Department: Anthropology
• Course: Anthropology 2290F/G
• Professor: Pamela Block

Document Summary

Theories of degeneration usually involve the loss of superior qualities through the interbreeding with inferior types. Africa, south america, etc: cumulative hereditary psychiatric decline . generation who was weak and epileptic , stages of degeneration: The science of improving the human race. Mendelian genetics: feeble-mindedness transmitted directly from generation to generation: we know now that this is not true, and most forms of intellectual disability is either congenital or acquired. Policy response to this social threat in the global north: movement of mental hygiene: prevention, institutionalization, and sterilization (sometimes got to extermination). Fitter family eugenics award: competition for the best families (medal awarded). Eugenics was not an extremist movement; it was a mainstream science of the era (early 20th century) and was very interdisciplinary. Eugenics family studies: evidence-based justification for segregation and sterilization. Evidence-based , based on the norms of the science methodologies of the time. Served as justification for the segregation, and later sterilization, of particular people/groups.