Doctoral Dissertation Reason and Faith: A Study of Interwar Chilean Eugenic Discourse

本论文项目以两次世界大战之间的智利为研究对象，旨在了解拉丁美洲天主教、性别和优生学之间的动态关系。科学历史学家经常争辩说，优生学（通过选择性育种提高人类种群中积极特征比例的努力）对大多数拉丁美洲人、科学家和非专业人士来说是令人反感的，因为他们是天主教徒。然而，利用各种科学小册子、蜉蝣、论文和教学材料，该项目将阐明拉丁美洲天主教徒如何从事优生科学。包括智利人在内的拉丁美洲人普遍认同拉马克的观点，即创造优生环境会随着时间的推移逐渐改善人口数量，而不是鼓励不适合的个人与社会其他部分分离。这个项目的智力价值在于它关注智利科学与宗教之间复杂的关系。这种关系已经在美国和欧洲进行了研究，但在拉丁美洲的情况并非如此。正是由于拉丁美洲的宗教特性，许多历史学家忽视了它作为科学创新之地的地位。其结果是，关于拉丁美洲科学史的学术著作相对匮乏，尤其是在没有欧洲人或美国人干预的情况下，拉丁美洲人实践的科学。讨论拉丁美洲科学的学者经常将其描述为有缺陷的或衍生的。然而，这个项目将把智利的优生学视为合法的。这种方法将更好地在历史上把智利的优生学与有关北大西洋国家宗教与科学关系的文献联系起来。这个项目更广泛的影响将是对科学话语在建立拉丁美洲两次世界大战之间性别规范方面的力量的检验。无论是宗教还是世俗的智利人，都支持现代化的父权性别体系，通过使用优生学话语，强调女性作为妻子和母亲的角色。这使得探索天主教和现代父权制如何影响拉丁美洲优生科学的发展成为可能。本项目由美国国家科学基金会科学、技术与社会计划资助。

This dissertation project focuses on interwar Chile to understand the dynamic relationship between Catholicism, gender and eugenics in Latin America. Historians of science often argue that eugenics (efforts to improve the proportion of positve traits in human populations by selective breeding) was distasteful to most Latin Americans, scientists and laymen, because of their Catholic identities. However, using a variety of scientific pamphlets, ephemera, treatises and instruction materials, this project will illuminate how Latin American Catholics engaged eugenic science. Latin Americans, Chileans included, generally latched on to the Lamarckian contention that creating a eugenic environment would gradually improve populations over time, rather than encouraging the separation of unfit individuals from the rest of society.The intellectual merit of this project lies in its focus on the complicated relationship between science and religion in Chile. This relationship has been studied in the United States and Europe, but this is not true of the Latin American case. Many historians overlook Latin America as a place of scientific innovation precisely because of its religious identity. The result of this has been the relative dearth of scholarly work on the history of science in Latin America, particularly science practiced by Latin Americans without the intervention of Europeans or Americans. Scholars who do discuss Latin American science often portray it as flawed or derivative. This project, however, will treat Chilean eugenics as legitimate. This approach will better historiographically link Chilean eugenics to literature on the relationship between religion and science in North Atlantic countries.The broader impact of this project will be an examination of the power scientific discourse had in the creation of Latin American interwar gender norms. Both religious and secular Chileans shored up notions of modernized, patriarchal gender systems that emphasized the role of women as wives and mothers through the use of eugenic discourse. This allows for the exploration of how both Catholicism and modernized patriarchy affected the development of eugenic science in Latin America.This project was funded by way of NSF's Science, Technology and Society Program.