Measuring Immorality: Social Inquiry and the Problem of Illegitimacy

ISBN-13: 9780521629744 / Angielski / Miękka / 1998 / 224 str.

Gail Reekie

Opis

This book examines how social science transforms a biological event--a birth--into a social and moral problem. Drawing on Foucault's "archaeology of knowledge," the book stresses the role of statistics and other truth-telling discourses in the birth and growth of the illegitimacy "problem" since the early nineteenth century. Chapters explore the diverse discursive origins of illegitimacy's negative meanings--expense, racial inferiority, social disorder, death, mental incompetence, fatherlessness and selfishness. The book offers an international perspective.

Spis treści

Introduction: assessing the problem; 1. Bastards and children of the parish; 2. Statistics and the birth of a social problem; 3. Reproducing at the nation's expense; 4. Illegitimate genes and racial inferiority; 5. The immorality of the white working class; 6. Illegitimate infancy: a deadly risk; 7. Offspring of feeble and neurotic minds; 8. Fatherless societies go primitive; 9. Murphy Brown, feminism and female selfishness; 10. The possibilities of a postmodern illegitimacy.