Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World: Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

ISBN-13: 9781316519448 / Angielski

Alexandra Roginski

Opis

A compelling history of how popular phrenology featured in the fates of people living in, and moving through, the settler-colonial world of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Innovatively using historical newspapers and other archives, Roginski traces the careers of a range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered.

Recenzje

'Alexandra Roginski's book is a rich and thoughtful study of knowledge-making and science on the move. Sensitive to the particularities of place, she offers a reading of colonial science in Australasia that traces the centrality of difference in the construction and performance of knowledge in the bush, in towns, and growing cities. This book immerses us in a world of popular science and dramatizes the importance of phrenology in struggles over power, authority and cultural identity at the edge of the British empire.' Tony Ballantyne, University of Otago

Spis treści

1. Bumps on the road: phrenological touts and travellers; 2. Massaging the town: phrenological ordeals and audiences; 3. Tactics on stage: indigenous performers, cultural exchange and negotiated power; 4. A godly touch of male power: phrenology, mesmerism and gendered authority; 5. Talking heads on a Murray River mission; 6. Black phrenologists, black masks; 7. Popular science in a changing Māori world; 8. Gardening a Duropean island: phrenologists, whiteness and reform for nationhood; 9. Divinatory science in the city and the bush; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.