Showing papers in "History of the Human Sciences in 2021"
TL;DR: Homosexual aversion therapy enjoyed two brief but intense periods of clinical experimentation: between 1950 and 1962 in Czechoslovakia, and between 1962 and 1975 in the British Commonwealth as discussed by the authors, and the experiments were carried out in both countries.
Abstract: Homosexual aversion therapy enjoyed two brief but intense periods of clinical experimentation: between 1950 and 1962 in Czechoslovakia, and between 1962 and 1975 in the British Commonwealth. The sp...
29 citations
TL;DR: In spite of the fact that the term "sexology" was popularized in the United States by Elizabeth Osgood Goodrich Willard and that the terms "sexual science" were usually attributed to Iwan Bloch...
Abstract: In spite of the fact that the term ‘sexology’ was popularized in the United States by Elizabeth Osgood Goodrich Willard and that the term ‘sexual science’—which is usually attributed to Iwan Bloch ...
24 citations
TL;DR: The genealogy of the health definition is explored and it is demonstrated how it was possible to expand the scope of health, redefine it as ‘well-being’, and overcome ideological resistance to progressive and international health approaches.
Abstract: The 1948 constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. It wa...
19 citations
TL;DR: In this context, sex researchers and their allies took pains to establish the r... as discussed by the authors, which emerged as a discipline during a period of keen concern about the social effects of sexually explicit media.
Abstract: Sexology emerged as a discipline during a period of keen concern about the social effects of sexually explicit media. In this context, sex researchers and their allies took pains to establish the r...
18 citations
TL;DR: The historical forces of war and migration impacted heavily on the disciplinary locations, practitioners, and structures of sexology and psychoanalysis that had developed in the first decades of the 20th century.
Abstract: The historical forces of war and migration impacted heavily on the disciplinary locations, practitioners, and structures of sexology and psychoanalysis that had developed in the first decades of th...
17 citations
TL;DR: This paper examined the use of cinematic microanalysis to capture, decompose, and interpret mother-infant interaction in the decades following the Second World War, focusing on the films and writ...
Abstract: This article examines the use of cinematic microanalysis to capture, decompose, and interpret mother–infant interaction in the decades following the Second World War. Focusing on the films and writ...
16 citations
TL;DR: The authors traces the emergence of the term welfare state in British political discourse and describes competing efforts to define its meaning, and presents a genealogy of the concept's emergence in the UK.
Abstract: This article traces the emergence of the term welfare state in British political discourse and describes competing efforts to define its meaning. It presents a genealogy of the concept's emergence ...
16 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the intersection of psychoanalysis with archaeology and histo-logic has been discussed in the context of archeology and psychology, and Freud's fascination with the ruins of ancient Rome was an element in the formation and development of psychology.
Abstract: Freud’s fascination with the ruins of ancient Rome was an element in the formation and development of psychology. This article concerns the intersection of psychoanalysis with archaeology and histo...
15 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors situate flash houses within public houses associated with criminal activity in early 19th-century London, and show that they are a shadowy and little-studied aspect of early London.
Abstract: ‘Flash houses’, a distinctive type of public house associated with criminal activity, are a shadowy and little-studied aspect of early 19th-century London. This article situates flash houses within...
14 citations
TL;DR: The history of psychoanalysis largely respects the boundaries drawn by the psychoanalytic profession, suggesting that the development of psychoanalyst theories and techniques has been the exclusive r... as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Histories of psychoanalysis largely respect the boundaries drawn by the psychoanalytic profession, suggesting that the development of psychoanalytic theories and techniques has been the exclusive r...
14 citations
TL;DR: The authors examined the historical construction of depression over about a hundred years, employing the social life of methods as an explanatory framework, and considered how emerging depression emerged over the last hundred years.
Abstract: This article examines the historical construction of depression over about a hundred years, employing the social life of methods as an explanatory framework. Specifically, it considers how emerging...
TL;DR: In this article, King provides a sweeping account of the work of famed anthropologist Franz Boas and the circle of maverick scholars that formed around him during the first half of the 20th century.
Abstract: The past few years have seen a noticeable uptick in the publication of works in the history of anthropology (see, for example, Blackhawk and Wilner, 2018; Bruchac, 2018; Darnell and Gleach, 2017, 2018, 2019; Harrison, Johnson-Simon, and Williams, 2018; Mattina, 2019; Milam, 2019; Vermeulen, 2015; Wickwire, 2019; Zumwalt, 2019). Given the slew of critical contributions in a such short period, one might justifiably ask why I have chosen to put only two particular texts into conversation with each other. This is an especially pertinent question given the noticeable differences in form, scope, and intended audience between the two books discussed below. With Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century, Charles King provides a sweeping account of the work of famed anthropologist Franz Boas and the circle of maverick scholars that formed around him during the first half of the 20th century. Intended for a
TL;DR: In this article, the authors suggest that "extraordinary children" are disturbi cation for children in British science fiction and horror films in the early 1960s introduced a new but dominant trope: the ‘extraordinary’ child.
Abstract: Depictions of children in British science fiction and horror films in the early 1960s introduced a new but dominant trope: the ‘extraordinary’ child. Extraordinary children, I suggest, are disturbi...
TL;DR: The article uses the birthday cards alongside archival material from the NSHD and oral history interviews with survey staff to trace the history of the growing awareness of importance of emotion within British social science research communities over the course of the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Abstract: The Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD) is Britain’s longest-running birth cohort study. From their birth in 1946 until the present day, its research participa...
TL;DR: For instance, this article argued that "mainstream addiction science is today widely marked by an antinomy between a neurologically determinist understanding of the human brain 'hijacked' by the biochemical allure of intoxicants and a li...
Abstract: Mainstream addiction science is today widely marked by an antinomy between a neurologically determinist understanding of the human brain ‘hijacked’ by the biochemical allure of intoxicants and a li...
TL;DR: In this article, the development of empirical social research in Portugal over about a century and its relation to the early institutionalization of sociology at the tail end of that period are examined.
Abstract: This article examines the development of empirical social research in Portugal over about a century and its relation to the early institutionalization of sociology at the tail end of that period. R...
TL;DR: In this paper, birth cohort studies can be used not only to generate population-level quantitative data, but also to recompose persons, and the crux is how we understand data and persons.
Abstract: Birth cohort studies can be used not only to generate population-level quantitative data, but also to recompose persons. The crux is how we understand data and persons. Recomposition entails scaven...
TL;DR: The history of race in the post-war sciences has focused predominantly on the UNESCO campaign against scientific racism and on the Anglo-American research community as discussed by the authors, which has been criticised by the authors of this paper.
Abstract: The historiography on the concept of race in the post-war sciences has focused predominantly on the UNESCO campaign against scientific racism and on the Anglo-American research community. By way of...
TL;DR: The most important parent of the idea of property in the person (self-ownership) is undoubtedly John Locke as discussed by the authors, who argued that the origins of this idea can be traced back as far as the...
Abstract: The most important parent of the idea of property in the person (self-ownership) is undoubtedly John Locke. In this article, we argue that the origins of this idea can be traced back as far as the ...
TL;DR: In what sense are houses themselves living things? If they live and act, how to conceive of the relationship between built and natural landscapes? as discussed by the authors explores the question of what houses do to the people who live with them.
Abstract: What do houses do to the people who live with them? In what sense are houses themselves living things? If they live and act, how to conceive of the relationship between built and natural landscapes...
TL;DR: It is shown that butterfly experiments function as important and politically charged evidence for a discussion at the heart of the sexological project of those involved in the founding of the Institute of Sexology: the question of the nature and naturalness of homosexuality (and sexual intermediacy more broadly) and its political consequences.
Abstract: This article considers the sexual politics of animal evidence in the context of German sexology around 1920. In the 1910s, the German-Jewish geneticist Richard B. Goldschmidt conducted experiments on the moth Lymantria dispar, and discovered individuals that were no longer clearly identifiable as male or female. When he published an article tentatively arguing that his research on 'intersex butterflies' could be used to inform concurrent debates about human homosexuality, he triggered a flurry of responses from Berlin-based sexologists. In this article, I examine how a number of well-known sexologists affiliated with Magnus Hirschfeld, his Scientific-Humanitarian Committee, and later his Institute of Sexology attempted to incorporate Goldschmidt's experiments into their sexological work between 1917 and 1923. Intersex butterflies were used to discuss issues at the heart of German sexology: the legal debate about the criminalisation of homosexuality under paragraph 175; the scientific methodology of sexology, caught between psychiatric, biological, and sociological approaches to the study of sexual and gender diversity; and the status of sexology as natural science, able to contribute knowledge about the sexual Konstitution of the organism. This article thus shows that butterfly experiments function as important and politically charged evidence for a discussion at the heart of the sexological project of those involved in the founding of the Institute of Sexology: the question of the nature and naturalness of homosexuality (and sexual intermediacy more broadly) and its political consequences. In doing so, this article makes a case for paying attention to non-human actors in the history of sexology.
TL;DR: This article demonstrates how increasingly sophisticated ‘nihilative’ strategies were ultimately successful in neutralising homoeopathy and that homoeopaths were defeated by allopaths (rather than disproven) at the conceptual level.
Abstract: The 19th century saw the development of an eclectic medical marketplace in both the United Kingdom and the United States, with mesmerists, herbalists and hydrotherapists amongst the plethora of medical 'sectarians' offering mainstream (or 'allopathic') medicine stiff competition. Foremost amongst these competitors were homoeopaths, a group of practitioners who followed Samuel Hahnemann (1982[1810]) in prescribing highly dilute doses of single-drug substances at infrequent intervals according to the 'law of similars' (like cures like). The theoretical sophistication of homoeopathy, compared to other medical sectarian systems, alongside its institutional growth after the mid-19th-century cholera epidemics, led to homoeopathy presenting a challenge to allopathy that the latter could not ignore. Whilst the subsequent decline of homoeopathy at the beginning of the 20th century was the result of multiple factors, including developments within medical education, the Progressive movement, and wider socio-economic changes, this article focuses on allopathy's response to homoeopathy's conceptual challenge. Using the theoretical framework of Berger and Luckmann (1991[1966]) and taking a Tory historiographical approach (Fuller, 2002) to recover more fully 19th-century homoeopathic knowledge, this article demonstrates how increasingly sophisticated 'nihilative' strategies were ultimately successful in neutralising homoeopathy and that homoeopaths were defeated by allopaths (rather than disproven) at the conceptual level. In this process, the therapeutic use of 'nosodes' (live disease products) and the language of bacteriology were pivotal. For their part, homoeopaths failed to mount a counter-attack against allopaths with an explanatory framework available to them.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a long history in the construction of public health knowledge on tuberculosis in the United Kingdom, using ethnic and im/migrant classification systems and their constituent categories.
Abstract: Ethnicity and im/migrant classification systems and their constituent categories have a long history in the construction of public health knowledge on tuberculosis in the United Kingdom. This artic...
TL;DR: The article suggests that, although the PIN is capable of individualizing, identifying, and addressing individuals, its most important and widely embraced feature is the extent to which it enables interoperability among public authorities, private businesses, and their data repositories.
Abstract: Many states make use of personal identity numbers (PINs) to govern people living in their territory and jurisdiction, but only a few rely on an all-purpose PIN used throughout the public and privat...
TL;DR: In fin-de-siecle France, we witness a strange circulation of concepts between philosophy, theoretical and experimental psychology, and the borderline realm of what we would now call meta- or paraps as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In fin-de-siecle France, we witness a strange circulation of concepts between philosophy, theoretical and experimental psychology, and the borderline realm of what we would now call meta- or paraps...
TL;DR: The authors reframes our understanding of French structural anthropology by considering the work of Andre Leroi-Gourhan alongside that of Claude Levi-Strauss, two anthropologists who worked at the same time.
Abstract: This article reframes our understanding of French structural anthropology by considering the work of Andre Leroi-Gourhan alongside that of Claude Levi-Strauss. These two anthropologists worked at o...
TL;DR: A fragment of the history of psychology in Poland, discussing its development in the years 1945-56, which saw sweeping political and geographical transformations, is presented in this paper, where the authors present a fragment of their analysis of the psychology in the country.
Abstract: This article presents a fragment of the history of psychology in Poland, discussing its development in the years 1945–56, which saw sweeping political and geographical transformations. In that mael...
TL;DR: The history of sexology is young and it is also expanding at a remarkable pace, both in terms of the volume of publications and, more notably, the geographical, disciplinary, and in...
Abstract: The historiography of sexology is young. It is also expanding at a remarkable pace, both in terms of the volume of publications and, more notably, in terms of its geographical, disciplinary, and in...
TL;DR: Tending to these dimensions of Comte’s understanding of the organism–environment relationship challenges the view that Comte is notable from a classical standpoint but ignorable from a contemporary one and invites renewed attention to his theoretical system.
Abstract: This article focuses on Auguste Comte’s understanding of the organism–environment relationship. It makes three key claims therein: (a) Comte’s metaphysical position privileged materiality and relat...
TL;DR: The Other Side of the Underneath (1973) is an adaptation of the radical feminist play A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches (1971) as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Jane Arden’s debut feature film The Other Side of the Underneath (1973) is an adaptation of the radical feminist play A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches (1971). In both the play and t...