Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World
Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

A compelling history of popular phrenology in the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of the nineteenth-century Tasman World.

Alexandra Roginski (Author)

9781009010504, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 February 2025

290 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.474 kg

'Roginski gives the reader engagingly written and finely textured portraits of the people who remade science to suit their needs and desires. Scholars and students of the history of science looking for an innovative example of how to present a perspective from below should seek out Roginski's book.' Harriet Mercer, Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society

The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external 'reading' of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, popular phrenologists – figures who often hailed from the margins – performed their science of touch and cranial jargon everywhere from mechanics' institutions to public houses. In this compelling work, Alexandra Roginski recounts a history of this everyday practice, exploring how it featured in the fates of people living in, and moving through, the Tasman World. Innovatively drawing on historical newspapers and a network of archives, she traces the careers of a diverse range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered. By analysing the actions at play in scientific episodes through ethnographic, social and cultural history, Roginski considers how this now-discredited science could, in its own day, yield fleeting power and advantage, even against a backdrop of large-scale dispossession and social brittleness.

1. Bumps on the road: phrenological touts and travellers
2. Massaging the town: phrenological ordeals and audiences
3. Tactics on stage: indigenous performers, cultural exchange and negotiated power
4. A godly touch of male power: phrenology, mesmerism and gendered authority
5. Talking heads on a Murray River mission
6. Black phrenologists, black masks
7. Popular science in a changing Māori world
8. Gardening a Duropean island: phrenologists, whiteness and reform for nationhood
9. Divinatory science in the city and the bush
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of engineering & technology [TBX]