Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State / Edition 1

by Julia Rodriguez

Overview

After a promising start as a prosperous and liberal democratic nation at the end of the nineteenth century, Argentina descended into instability and crisis. This stark reversal, in a country rich in natural resources and seemingly bursting with progress and energy, has puzzled many historians. In Civilizing Argentina, Julia Rodriguez takes a sharply contrary view, demonstrating that Argentina's turn of fortune is not a mystery but rather the ironic consequence of schemes to "civilize" the nation in the name of progressivism, health, science, and public order.

With new medical and scientific information arriving from Europe at the turn of the century, a powerful alliance developed among medical, scientific, and state authorities in Argentina. These elite forces promulgated a political culture based on a medical model that defined social problems such as poverty, vagrancy, crime, and street violence as illnesses to be treated through programs of social hygiene. They instituted programs to fingerprint immigrants, measure the bodies of prisoners, place wives who disobeyed their husbands in "houses of deposit," and exclude or expel people deemed socially undesirable, including groups such as labor organizers and prostitutes. Such policies, Rodriguez argues, led to the destruction of the nation's liberal ideals and opened the way to the antidemocratic, authoritarian governments that came later in the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807856697
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/27/2006
Edition description:	1
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.72(d)

About the Author

Julia Rodriguez is associate professor of history and women's studies at the University of New Hampshire.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This is an outstanding scholarly work. Julia Rodriguez subtly explores the ways in which scientists sought to redirect Argentine history. Civilizing Argentina is original, insightful, and bound to redirect Argentine historiography." —Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University

Julia Rodriguez argues that the wealth and development during Argentina's 'golden era' did not bring progress, freedom, or equality. In fact, the seeds of social decay were planted in this period. With compelling evidence from medical, legal, judicial, and political professionals and elites, government reports, and the popular press, this book makes a very significant contribution to the field of medical and social history in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean. It also is of great value for its comparative potential with medical and social histories in other regions.—Kristin Ruggiero, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Editorial Reviews

Reviewer: Elizabeth Connor, MLS, DM/AHIP(The Citadel)
Description: According to the author, Argentina's history from colonial times to the present has been punctuated by fears of criminal behavior, anarchy, and contagion brought by immigrants, giving rise to oligarchic regimes and cultural divisiveness. The country's early medical traditions were promising as their cures and preventive measures were based on European scientific advances. The title refers to Argentina's struggle to understand its turbulent past, and the true meaning of "civilization."
Purpose: The author categorizes Argentina's instability into four clinical categories: symptoms, diagnosis, prescriptions, and hygiene.
Audience: The author is an assistant professor of history and women's studies at the University of New Hampshire and she received postdoctoral research funding from the National Science Foundation, American Association of the History of Medicine, and other sources. Despite the author's clinical approach to organizing the content into sections (symptoms, diagnosis, prescriptions, and hygiene), the work may appeal more to social historians and criminal justice researchers than medical historians, or persons interested in Latin American history.
Features: The author traces Argentina's turbulent social history by organizing the content into four parts: symptoms, diagnosis, prescriptions, and hygiene. Topics covered include sanitation, epidemics, homosexuality, prostitution, infant mortality, treatment of the mentally ill and prisoners, and more. Features include line maps and some compelling black-and-white photographs. The book also includes an index, reference notes, and an essay on sources consulted. A work of this length deserves a more thorough index.
Assessment: The author uses an impressive amount of primary source material. The liberal use of quotation marks ("progressive" or "modern") throughout detracts somewhat from the narrative. The time period and subject matter covered are so immense that the book feels like an introduction. Medical historians and students might appreciate Kristin Ruggiero's Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina (Stanford University Press, 2004) or Mariano Ben Plotkin's Argentina on the Couch: Psychiatry, State, and Society: 1880 to the Present (University of New Mexico Press, 2003).

Doody's Review Service

Reviewer: Elizabeth Connor, MLS, DM/AHIP(The Citadel)
Description: "According to the author, Argentina's history from colonial times to the present has been punctuated by fears of criminal behavior, anarchy, and contagion brought by immigrants, giving rise to oligarchic regimes and cultural divisiveness. The country's early medical traditions were promising as their cures and preventive measures were based on European scientific advances. The title refers to Argentina's struggle to understand its turbulent past, and the true meaning of "civilization." "
Purpose: The author categorizes Argentina's instability into four clinical categories: symptoms, diagnosis, prescriptions, and hygiene.
Audience: "The author is an assistant professor of history and women's studies at the University of New Hampshire and she received postdoctoral research funding from the National Science Foundation, American Association of the History of Medicine, and other sources. Despite the author's clinical approach to organizing the content into sections (symptoms, diagnosis, prescriptions, and hygiene), the work may appeal more to social historians and criminal justice researchers than medical historians, or persons interested in Latin American history. "
Features: "The author traces Argentina's turbulent social history by organizing the content into four parts: symptoms, diagnosis, prescriptions, and hygiene. Topics covered include sanitation, epidemics, homosexuality, prostitution, infant mortality, treatment of the mentally ill and prisoners, and more. Features include line maps and some compelling black-and-white photographs. The book also includes an index, reference notes, and an essay on sources consulted. A work of this length deserves a more thorough index. "
Assessment: The author uses an impressive amount of primary source material. The liberal use of quotation marks ("progressive" or "modern") throughout detracts somewhat from the narrative. The time period and subject matter covered are so immense that the book feels like an introduction. Medical historians and students might appreciate Kristin Ruggiero's Modernity in the Flesh: Medicine, Law, and Society in Turn-of-the-Century Argentina (Stanford University Press, 2004) or Mariano Ben Plotkin's Argentina on the Couch: Psychiatry, State, and Society: 1880 to the Present (University of New Mexico Press, 2003).

An important contribution.—Hispanic American Historical Review



An original approach to the roles of science and medicine in civilizing Argentina in the twentieth century.—Journal of the History of Medicine



Provides a thought-provoking introduction to some key questions in Argentine historiography, and will interest all students of the history of criminology, legal medicine and the rise of the modern interventionist state.—Social History of Medicine



A valuable contribution to Argentine historiography and to current discussions of the arrival of modernity on the periphery of the industrialized world.—American Historical Review



[A] multifaceted portrait . . . [and] a welcome approach. . . . Useful as a first glimpse into the ideas and practices of Argentine scientists at the turn of the twentieth century.—Journal of Latin American Studies



Civilizing Argentina constitutes part of a wave of new studies that will finally 'decolonialize' the history of criminology by establishing its importance and autonomous development in nations outside of Europe and North America.—Theoretical Criminology



Civilizing Argentina is a worthy book and an important addition to the history of Argentina.—The Americas



An important book. Julia Rodriguez has provided us with an intellectual history of science and medicine as applied to Argentina.—H-LatAm



Within its field Civilizing Argentina offers a paradoxical explanation for a central Latin American historical problem.—Journal of Women's History



Exemplifies the sophisticated and important work that the history of gender, science, and medicine can do in explaining how power works more broadly in modern societies.—Journal of Women's History

From the Publisher