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

本论文以两次世界大战期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。科学史学家经常辩称，优生学(通过选择性繁殖提高人类种群中阳性性状的比例)令大多数拉丁美洲人、科学家和门外汉反感，因为他们的天主教身份。然而，该项目将利用各种科学小册子、星历、论文和教学材料，阐明拉丁美洲天主教徒是如何从事优生科学的。包括智利人在内的拉丁美洲人普遍坚持拉马克的观点，即随着时间的推移，创造优生环境将逐渐改善人口，而不是鼓励将不适合的人与社会其他部分分开。这个项目的学术价值在于它关注智利科学和宗教之间的复杂关系。美国和欧洲已经研究过这种关系，但拉丁美洲的情况并非如此。许多历史学家忽视了拉丁美洲作为科学创新之地的重要性，这正是因为它的宗教身份。其结果是，拉丁美洲关于科学史的学术研究相对匮乏，特别是拉丁美洲人在没有欧洲人或美国人干预的情况下从事的科学活动。确实讨论拉丁美洲科学的学者经常把它描绘成有缺陷的或衍生的。然而，这个项目将把智利的优生学视为合法的。这一方法将在历史上更好地将智利优生学与北大西洋国家关于宗教和科学之间关系的文献联系起来。这一项目的更广泛影响将是对科学话语在拉丁美洲两次世界大战期间性别规范创建过程中的力量的审查。宗教和世俗的智利人都支持现代化的父权制性别制度的概念，这种制度通过使用优生话语强调妇女作为妻子和母亲的作用。这使得可以探索天主教和现代化的父权制如何影响拉丁美洲优生科学的发展。该项目由美国国家科学基金会的科学、技术和社会计划资助。

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.