Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World
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Overview
The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external 'reading' of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, popular phrenologists - figures who often hailed from the margins - performed their science of touch and cranial jargon everywhere from mechanics' institutions to public houses. In this compelling work, Alexandra Roginski recounts a history of this everyday practice, exploring how it featured in the fates of people living in, and moving through, the Tasman World. Innovatively drawing on historical newspapers and a network of archives, she traces the careers of a diverse range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered. By analysing the actions at play in scientific episodes through ethnographic, social and cultural history, Roginski considers how this now-discredited science could, in its own day, yield fleeting power and advantage, even against a backdrop of large-scale dispossession and social brittleness.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781316519448
- ISBN-10: 1316519449
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- Publish Date: June 2023
- Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.81 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.31 pounds
- Page Count: 290
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