Situating eugenics: Robert DeCourcy Ward and the Immigration Restriction League of Boston

Lavery, Colm

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2016.05.015

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Additional research is needed to understand the motivations behind these efforts, including the societal forces prevalent at the time that promoted a solitary individual into this leadership position 5 . 5 One important area for future research is Abbe's long associations with well-known leaders in the eugenics movement of the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, including William Morris Davis and Robert DeCourcy Ward, the latter of whom became AMS's first president (Ward was a founder of the Immigration Restriction League, an architect of the restrictive immigration laws of the early 1920s and a recognized eugenicist for his work on global race mapping (Okrent 2019, Lavery 2016, Cohen 2016). This era, marked by the rise of eugenics as a science and its impact on the meteorological community is being more deeply investigated by the authors and others (see, e.g., Lavery 2019) with a sharp focus on Ward (Okrent 2019, Lavery 2016, Cohen 2016.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Myth of Cleveland Abbe: A Review of a Manufactured History of the Creation of the National Weather Service

Romano

Uccellini

Stremikis

2022

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

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For more than a century, Cleveland Abbe was placed on a pedestal as meteorology’s solitary leader. Lauded by power brokers within the developing United States meteorological community, directors of the Weather Bureau (predecessor to today’s National Weather Service) and the American Meteorological Society, he was cited by many as the father of what is now the NWS, its first director, and issuer of its first forecast. However, a historiographical review of the literature that established the Abbe legend presented here shows the image held of Abbe today was actively manufactured; written, and supported by Abbe himself, his family, the Weather Bureau, and others within the AMS.We show that Abbe’s role in the creation of the nation’s first federal weather service was elevated while the contributions of others were actively downplayed. The latter applies particularly to Increase Lapham, who worked for two decades to demonstrate how a 24-hour forecast of events could be generated from the collection and analysis of surface data, and whose active solicitation of Congressman Halbert Paine ultimately led to the creation of the first national weather service within the U.S. Army Signal Service on February 9, 1870.This paper is provided to shed a clearer light on those who contributed to the creation of what is now called the National Weather Service, which recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, and offer insights into how the Abbe myth was sustained as the AMS celebrated its anniversaries at 25-year intervals over its 100-year history.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Myth of Cleveland Abbe: A Review of a Manufactured History of the Creation of the National Weather Service

Romano

Uccellini

Stremikis

2022

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society

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“…22 His pride in his Anglo-Saxon heritage was consistently reinforced during his time as a student at Harvard, partly because of "the institutional foundations of immigration restriction [that] was explicitly carved into the Harvard intellectual creed." 23 Here, the influence of the racial and evolutionary work of Nathaniel Southgate Shaler was felt. Shaler, along with the climatologist Robert De Courcy Ward had become leading figures in the Immigration Restriction League of Boston, which employed eugenics and racism to contest the open doors immigration policy of the era.…”

Section: Ellsworth Huntingtonmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Power of Racial Mapping: Ellsworth Huntington, Immigration, and Eugenics in the Progressive Era

Lavery¹

2022

J. gilded age prog. era

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Racial mapping during the Progressive Era played into the political narratives of eugenic intervention and immigration restriction. This article argues that the racial cartographic work of the Yale geographer and prolific eugenicist Ellsworth Huntington was both developed within and contributed to this racist milieu. Huntington’s middle-class and educated upbringing, his familial history, and his expertise as a well-travelled geographer all conspired to shape his views on eugenics, race, and immigration. By applying the critical cartographic theories of John Brian Harley, Denis Wood, Heather Winlow, and others, I show that Huntington’s racial maps were a product of his cultural and political environment. The success of a map’s impact was often due to maps being seen as objective depictions of spatial variation. Indeed, for Huntington they performed an essential role in communicating and portraying racial information. But, as I argue, they were susceptible to bias, misunderstanding, and intentional manipulation. I show that Huntington’s maps are not accurate snapshots of reality, but rather cultural texts or rhetorical images intended to create a narrative and convince the reader of a particular subjective point of view.

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“…Looking back, such moments feel painfully judgemental and colonial in mind-set. For it isn't difficult to trace lines of connection in a history of ideas about heat, bodies and thermal conditions that extends back to determinist thinking about climate and race (Lavery, 2016;Carey, 2012;Oppermann et al, 2017), indigenous dark bodies having being represented by the climate scientists of imperial institutions as naturally acclimatised to high temperatures and genetically limited in their capacities and potential by being from distant tropical places. Such ideas can linger and endure even when apparently long dismissed, and just maybe there were traces left in our shared expectations that living with hot temperatures in 'other' parts of the world was just normal (by implication for black and brown bodies), unproblematic and part of cultural traditions.…”

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confidence: 99%

Whose energy use matters? Reflections on energy poverty and decolonisation

Walker¹

2022

PPP

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Calls for decolonisation have over recent years spread across academic institutions, disciplines and fields of research. Taking up a decolonisation agenda involves not only making clear the colonial foundation of contemporary patterns of inequality, injustice and discrimination, but also asking searching questions about how contemporary knowledge that is routinely produced, shared and made use of is embedded in colonial histories and worldviews. Much that is implicit in assumptions about how things are known, what matters and how change is to be pursued is potentially opened up to critique; with links to longer standing calls for the valuing of indigenous/local knowledge and for challenging universal (western) claims of truth and meaning (Jansen, 2019). Decolonisation implies institutional critique, but also challenging our own assumptions and practice, reflecting on how these have been shaped by the history of ideas that have come to dominate particular fields of inquiry.For those interested in energy and climate, some excellent analysis has made clear the colonial roots of much that underpins contemporary carbon-based energy systems and the (racial) injustice of the climate crisis (Newell, 2021;Brand and Wissen, 2021). As Lennon (2017: 19) has incisively argued 'the colonial apparatus transformed energy -the ability to change matter -into a commoditized form that made certain lives not matter'. My reflections here, however, are on how calls for decolonisation are relevant to how we understand and approach problems of inequalities in energy use, including assumptions that are made as to how, and why, having access to affordable energy matters. In considering these questions, which refract through and beyond race, I reflect on my own history of ideas, embedded in a western European context, as well as those that have been at play in at least parts of the wider field of mainstream energy and fuel poverty research, and now in transition and decarbonisation problem framings. p. 2. Whose energy use matters? Reflections on energy poverty and decolonisation

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Situating eugenics: Robert DeCourcy Ward and the Immigration Restriction League of Boston

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

The Myth of Cleveland Abbe: A Review of a Manufactured History of the Creation of the National Weather Service

The Myth of Cleveland Abbe: A Review of a Manufactured History of the Creation of the National Weather Service

The Power of Racial Mapping: Ellsworth Huntington, Immigration, and Eugenics in the Progressive Era

Whose energy use matters? Reflections on energy poverty and decolonisation

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