This article contends that understandings of race and practices of racial differentiation underwent a significant epistemological shift around the first decades of the twentieth century. It reaches this conclusion via consideration of a dog breeding programme conducted by the statistician and hereditarian theorist Karl Pearson. In 1913, Pearson proclaimed that he, along with his collaborators Edward Nettleship and Charles Usher, had created a ‘new race’ of dog. Notable for its complete absence of hair pigmentation, this race appeared to demonstrate the potential that experimental animal breeding had for imperial policy-making. In differentiating his dogs from the Pekingese spaniels from which they had been produced, Pearson sought to show that ‘foreign’ animals could be made to approximate British racial standards. In Pearson's wake, animal breeding became an increasingly persuasive means by which scientists sought to legitimate racial contentions. By the 1920s, established anthropocentric approaches to human differentiation had begun to be replaced by new, animal-centred techniques and practices. Whereas nineteenth-century conceptions of race had primarily been articulated in relation to the study of human bodies, in the new race of the twentieth century, differentiation would involve study of and experimentation with bodies of all kinds – animal and human.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Logan, Cheryl A.;
(2013)
Hormones, Heredity, and Race: Spectacular Failure in Interwar Vienna
(/isis/citation/CBB001214620/)
Book
Mackenzie Cooley;
(2022)
The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance
(/isis/citation/CBB506702141/)
Book
Müller-Wille, Staffan;
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg;
(2012)
A Cultural History of Heredity
(/isis/citation/CBB001251195/)
Article
Cheang, Sarah;
(2006)
Women, Pets, and Imperialism: The British Pekingese Dog and Nostalgia for Old China
(/isis/citation/CBB000660019/)
Article
Rushton, A. R.;
(2000)
Nettleship, Pearson and Bateson: The biometric-Mendelian debate in a medical context
(/isis/citation/CBB000110375/)
Article
Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey;
(2007)
Inbreeding, Eugenics, and Helen Dean King (1869--1955)
(/isis/citation/CBB000773223/)
Article
Marianna Szczygielska;
(2022)
Undoing Extinction: The Role of Zoos in Breeding Back the Tarpan Wild Horse, 1922–1945
(/isis/citation/CBB178294700/)
Thesis
Matz, Brendan A.;
(2011)
Crafting Heredity: The Art and Science of Livestock Breeding in the United States and Germany, 1860--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001567276/)
Article
Tyrrell, Brian;
(2015)
Bred for the Race: Thoroughbred Breeding and Racial Science in the United States, 1900--1940
(/isis/citation/CBB001510455/)
Article
Berry, Dominic;
(2014)
The Plant Breeding Industry after Pure Line Theory: Lessons from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany
(/isis/citation/CBB001420118/)
Article
Roger J. Wood;
(2015)
Darbishire expands his vision of heredity from Mendelian genetics to inherited memory
(/isis/citation/CBB211130319/)
Chapter
Kevles, Daniel J.;
(2011)
New Blood, New Fruits: Protections for Breeders and Originators, 1789--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001221559/)
Chapter
Fangerau, Heiner;
(2007)
Wissenschaft im Einsatz: Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz und ihr “Standardwerk” zur Menschlichen Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene 1921--1940
(/isis/citation/CBB001032015/)
Article
Logan, Cheryl A.;
(2007)
Overheated Rats, Race, and the Double Gland: Paul Kammerer, Endocrinology and the Problem of Somatic Induction
(/isis/citation/CBB000773240/)
Article
Jon Røyne Kyllingstad;
(2022)
The Norwegian Association for Heredity Research and the Organized International Eugenics Movement. Expertise, Authority, Transnational Networks and International Organization in Norwegian Genetics and Eugenics (1919-1934)
(/isis/citation/CBB477102725/)
Article
Mastroianni, George R.;
(2006)
Kurt Gottschaldt's Ambiguous Relationship with National Socialism
(/isis/citation/CBB000610113/)
Thesis
Wood, James Anthony;
(cited 2012)
Natural Guardians of the Race: Heredity, Hygiene, Alcohol, and Degeneration in Scottish Psychiatry, c. 1860--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001567411/)
Thesis
Rensing, Susan Marie;
(2006)
Feminist Eugenics in America: From Free Love to Birth Control, 1880--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001561652/)
Book
Dorr, Gregory Michael;
(2008)
Segregation's Science: Eugenics and Society in Virginia
(/isis/citation/CBB000951061/)
Article
Baker, Graham;
(2014)
Eugenics and Migration: A Case Study of Salvation Army Literature about Canada and Britain, c.1890--1921
(/isis/citation/CBB001420269/)
Be the first to comment!