The Cultivation Of Whiteness

The winner of the first Basic Prize in History of Science is a controversial study of the rise of medicine in Australia and its relation to racial thinking. In nineteenth-century Australia, the main commentators on race and biological differences were doctors. But the medical profession entertained serious anxieties about the possibility of "racial denigration" of the white population in the new land, and medical and social scientists violated ethics and principles in pursuit of a more homogenised Australia.

The Cultivation of Whiteness examines the notions of "whiteness" and racism, and introduces a whole new framework for discussion of the development of medicine and science. Warwick Anderson provides the first full account of the shocking experimentation in the 1920s and '30s on Aboriginal people of the central deserts—the Australian equivalent of the infamous Tuskegee Experiment.

Lucid and entertaining throughout, this pioneering historical survey of ideas will help to reshape debate on race, ethnicity, citizenship, and environment everywhere.