Scientific Racism in Modern South Africa

A study of the history of intellectual and scientific racism in modern South Africa.

Saul Dubow (Author)

9780521479073, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 June 1995

336 pages, 6 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.719 kg

"Dubow's conscientiously researched and cautiously interpreted wealth of specific historical material presented in a wealth of historical detail." George W. Stocking, Jr., Isis

This is the first full-length study of the history of intellectual and scientific racism in modern South Africa. Ranging broadly across disciplines in the social sciences, sciences and humanities, it charts the rise of scientific racism during the late nineteenth century and the subsequent decline of biological determinism from the mid-twentieth century, and considers the complex relationship between theories of essential racial difference and the political rise of segregation and apartheid. Saul Dubow draws extensively on comparable studies of intellectual racism in Europe and the United States to demonstrate the selective absorption of widely prevalent conceptions of racial difference in the particular historical context of South Africa, and the issues he addresses are of relevance to both Africanist and international students of racism and race relations.

1. Introduction
2. Physical anthropology and the quest for the 'missing link'
3. Bantu origins, racial narratives
4. Biological determinism and the development of eugenics
5. The equivocal message of eugenics
6. Mental testing and the understanding of the 'native mind'
7. Christian-national ideology, apartheid, and the concept of 'race'
8. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]