GGRC02H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter week 5: Germ Plasm, Settlement Movement, Sociobiology
JOHN RADFORD - STERILIZATION VERSUS SEGREGATION: CONTROL OF THE FEEBLEMINDED
- Normalization/de-institutionalization and community care are the most common mental
handicap polices in NA
oRole of close institution over past century has significance beyond just the # of
people who are handicapped/institutionalized
- Mental handicap is both medical diagnoses and social constructs
oPaper focuses on relationship between ideology and creation of large-scale,
institutionalized for segregation
oActions of asylum officials were rooted in mixture of motives Radford’s paper is
about contextualizing social policy in the first half of the century
Study finds that small number of specialized institutions back from the
mid 19th century were initially founded as an educational establishment
tried to educate “idiots”
Mental deficiency act of 193 forced on a more custodial role, led to a
farm colony of the original “Royal Western Counties Institution”
Custodial policies = lifelong detention of people certified as
mentally deficient (until 1970)
- What were causes of this custodialism?
Asylum literature suffers from 2 drawbacks: (1) authors have only been peripherally
concerned w/ mental handicaps, (2) central debate in this literature is not very
based on primary source
oThus: not a lot of literature about institutions history
Purpose of this literature is to: discern aspects of society that were epitomized in
these asylums to help us understand both
In the 20th century, the clearest line from inside the mental handicap asylum to the
realm of social policy was via the eugenics movement
- The concept of normalization which has dominated mental handicap policy for 2
decades has origins in eugenics principles
oLook at Nazi actions from Bengt Nirje and Wolf Wolfensberger
Nazi regime eugenic sterilization law in 1933 that required physicians to
report all people who were “mentally unfit” to health courts
About 225k people were sterilized w/I 3 yers of the program
were reported to be “feebleminded”
US also had sterilization law that sterilized 42k people between
1907-1944
oEugenics movement was focused on “feebleminded” people segregation was
as much a control as sterilization was
Literature analysis shows: specialized custodial institutions for mentally
deficient were driven by eugenic social policy (to prevent breeding of
“feebleminded” esp. women)
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Document Summary
John radford - sterilization versus segregation: control of the feebleminded. Normalization/de-institutionalization and community care are the most common mental handicap polices in na: role of close institution over past century has significance beyond just the # of people who are handicapped/institutionalized. Study finds that small number of specialized institutions back from the mid 19th century were initially founded as an educational establishment. Mental deficiency act of 193 forced on a more custodial role, led to a farm colony of the original royal western counties institution . Custodial policies = lifelong detention of people certified as mentally deficient (until 1970) Purpose of this literature is to: discern aspects of society that were epitomized in these asylums to help us understand both. In the 20th century, the clearest line from inside the mental handicap asylum to the realm of social policy was via the eugenics movement.
