Dreaming of a cosmic race: José Vasconcelos and the politics of race in Mexico, 1920s–1930s

Manrique, Linnete

doi:10.1080/23311983.2016.1218316

Cited by 28 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…As with the U.S., however, forcing the assimilation of all to the culture of the elite not only does not change who they are, it perpetuates their status as outsiders lacking the cultural capital to advance according to someone else's priorities. Manrique (2016) argues that there was a eugenics element behind the homogenization of Mexican society in a European image that was biased in racial/ethnic and gendered terms, given its positioning of original people and women as subordinate. The Mexican effort to stabilize its many people into a national identity resulted in a colonial regime perpetuated through the vehicle of school.…”

Section: Mexico: Porfirio Vasconcelos and Mass Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Creation of National Cultures through Education, the Inequities They Produce, and the Challenges for Multicultural Education

Smagorinsky¹

2022

IJME

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This essay compares and contrasts the educational movements of three nations—the United States, Mexico, and the Soviet Union—established according to Eurocentric cultural values. In each country, mass education was undertaken to help produce an assimilative national culture during formative periods characterized by instability. In two of these nations, the U.S. and Mexico, this foundation eventually required an accommodation to address multiculturalism. This latter-day perspective is designed to recognize, respect, and appreciate a variety of cultures. This essay examines the ways in which these two oppositional goals—monoculturalism and multiculturalism—have intersected in schools.

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Section: Mexico: Porfirio Vasconcelos and Mass Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Creation of National Cultures through Education, the Inequities They Produce, and the Challenges for Multicultural Education

Smagorinsky¹

2022

IJME

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“…They are expected to contribute to biological and behavioral population improvement over time by acting in modern ways. The eugenic and antiindigenous elements of this ideology have become implicit rather than explicit over time; the open discussions about how to create evolution within la raza (the race), which were commonplace in the early half of the 1900s, have since faded away (Manrique 2016;Stepan 1991). Yet, these ideas continue to echo in certain arenas, such as the continuing marginalization of indigenous people in healthcare as discussed above, in national scientific projects built on the assumption of a homogenous, mestizo populace (García-Deister and López-Beltrán 2015;Nieves Delgado 2020), and especially in discussions of gender.…”

Section: Gender Health and Time In Mexican Notions Of Collective Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Time and Collective Biology: Relationships Between Individual and Societal Life Course Ideologies in Mexican Men’s Sexual Health Treatment

Wentzell

2021

A&A

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People may seek to embody cultural ideals of the life course through their use or rejection of medical interventions, including but not limited to anti-aging treatments. Here, I analyze this phenomenon via interviews with men engaging with two different forms of sexual health medicine in urban Mexico: erectile-dysfunction treatment and testing for sexually transmitted infections (STIs). I argue that, in contrast to the biomedical understanding of patients as individuals who change during their lives, my interlocutors understood themselves as components in broader “collective biologies” that change on a longer timeline. These are culturally-defined groups that people understand to be comprised of interrelated members whose behaviors concretely affect the group’s physical and social well-being over time. In both medical arenas discussed here, men used or rejected sexual health interventions in response to local narratives about the nature of the Mexican population as a collective biology, including ideas about how it should change over time away from its roots in the colonial past. They characterized predispositions to machismo and disinterest in preventative health care as embodied inheritances that the Mexican population should reject in order to achieve health-promoting modernity in the future. My analysis describes how these interlocutors sought to live out desirably modern forms of race and gender through their medical decisions in a way that they hoped would contribute to positive, embodied change in the Mexican social body over time. These findings show that, despite the assumptions of individualism generally naturalized in anti-aging treatment and biomedicine, people may make medical decisions in an effort to aid collective change over population-level timescales.

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“…The cultural politics of nationalism and a 'scientific' movement of eugenics and hygiene was partially substituted for Catholic dogma during the postrevolutionary period in the 1920s and 1930s (Stern, 1999). The US, the UK, Sweden and Norway were leading eugenic countries in the first half of the 1900s, linking evolution, degeneration, civilization and modernity (Manrique, 2016). Despite being derived from science, the emerging norms governing childhood were neither the product of a purely objective enquiry nor neutral in their effects (Smith, 2011).…”

Section: Institutionalized Childhoods In Mexico Throughout Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The meaning of my life will always be to defend our Motherland’

Ursin¹

2019

JCSW

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EnglishThe point of departure of this paper is that childhood is socially constructed and continuously re-defined through public policies, laws, practices and ideologies. The paper explores the perspectives on children, upbringing and socialization as reflected in the manuals, forms and questionnaires of social workers in a child protection institution in Mexico. It employs a theoretical lens borrowed from Childhood Studies, using three dominant images of childhood—the Dionysian, Apollonian and Athenian—to examine the links between discursive constructions of childhood and ways of governing institutionalized children. Four overarching themes were identified as representative of predominant concepts of values concerning children and child rearing in an institutionalized context in the documents: (1) Patriotism, (2) Work ethics, (3) Hygiene, and (4) Physical experiences and sexuality. The analysis reveals how children are perceived primarily as future citizens, with their upbringing being a part of a wider nation-building project. Hence, there is an emphasis on how to become a ‘decent’ labourer, internalize the values of- and loyalty to the nation-state, and develop into a ‘moral’ and ‘civilized’ citizen. It is argued that institutional socialization is part and parcel of a political ideology that reinforces the idea of children as relatively passive socialization objects. Spanish"El sentido de mi vida siempre será defender nuestra patria”: Criando y educando ciudadanos en instituciones de protección infantil en México. El punto de partida de este artículo es que la infancia es construida socialmente, y que es continuamente redefinida a través de las políticas públicas, las leyes, las prácticas y las ideologías. Este artículo explora las perspectivas sobre los niños, la crianza, y la socialización según se reflejan en los manuales, planillas y cuestionarios de los trabajadores sociales en una institución de protección infantil en México. Se emplea la propuesta teórica tomada de los Estudios de la Infancia, usando tres imágenes dominantes (Dionisíaca, Apolínea y Ateniense) para examinar los vínculos entre las construcciones discursivas sobre la infancia y las formas que gobiernan a los niños institucionalizados. Se identificaron cuatro temas relevantes como representativos de los conceptos de valores predominantes en los documentos respecto a los niños, y cuidado infantil en un contexto institucionalizado: (1) Patriotismo, (2) Ética de trabajo, (3) Higiene, y (4) Experiencias físicas y sexualidad. El análisis revela cómo los niños son percibidos primeramente como futuros ciudadanos, y su crianza es parte de un proyecto más amplio de construcción de la nación. De este modo hay un énfasis en cómo convertirse en un trabajador “decente”, internalizar los valores de y la lealtad al Estado nación, y desarrollar un ciudadano moral y civilizado. Se afirma que la socialización institucional es parte de la ideología política que refuerza la idea de los niños como objetos de socialización relativamente pasivos.

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Dreaming of a cosmic race: José Vasconcelos and the politics of race in Mexico, 1920s–1930s

Cited by 28 publications

References 9 publications

The Creation of National Cultures through Education, the Inequities They Produce, and the Challenges for Multicultural Education

The Creation of National Cultures through Education, the Inequities They Produce, and the Challenges for Multicultural Education

Time and Collective Biology: Relationships Between Individual and Societal Life Course Ideologies in Mexican Men’s Sexual Health Treatment

‘The meaning of my life will always be to defend our Motherland’

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