EUGENICS

Eugenics is a pseudoscience aimed at improving and controlling the genetic structure of the human species by selective breeding, which implies preventing inferior people from having children (negative eugenics) and encouraging superior ones to reproduce (positive eugenics). The Eugenics movement originated in the early 19th century and it was largely developed under the influence of Francis Galton in the United Kingdom and Charles Davenport in the United States. These two scientists advocated the selective breeding of desirable traits and reproductive control of undesirable traits in the human race. Racially-oriented eugenics had a dramatic expansion and its peak in Nazi Germany. Being the essence of many racial laws, eugenics was atrociously applied in practice by means of mass euthanasia, mass sterilization, extermination in gas chambers, and horrible experiments on people of lower races or those unworthy of living.

Ciência e miscigenação racial no início do século XX: debates e controvérsias de Edgard Roquette-Pinto com a antropologia física norte-americana

Resumo O artigo analisa a participação do antropólogo brasileiro Edgard Roquette-Pinto no debate internacional envolvendo o campo da antropologia física e as discussões sobre miscigenação racial nas primeiras décadas do século XX. Trata especialmente da leitura, das interpretações e das controvérsias que o cientista brasileiro produziu com um grupo de antropólogos e eugenistas norte-americanos, entre eles nomes como Charles Davenport, Madison Grant e Franz Boas. O artigo também problematiza as diferentes formas de leitura e de apropriação intelectual, a circulação internacional de ideias e o modo como as interpretações antropológicas produzidas por Roquette-Pinto ganharam novos sentidos ao romper as fronteiras nacionais.