Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State [Paperback]

Julia Rodriguez (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 080785669X | ISBN-13: 978-0807856697 | Publication Date: February 8, 2006 | Edition: 1

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.

Editorial Reviews

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

"An important contribution."
— Hispanic American Historical Review



"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

"This is an outstanding scholarly work. Civilizing Argentina is original, insightful, and bound to redirect Argentine historiography."
Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University

"A very significant contribution to the field of medical and social history in Latin America and the Caribbean."
Kristin Ruggiero, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

From the Inside Flap

Rodriguez analyzes the powerful alliance between medicine, science, and the state in Argentina between 1880 and 1914, resulting in a political culture based on a medical model of defining social problems such as poverty, vagrancy, crime, and street violence as illnesses to be treated through programs of social hygiene. She argues that these policies led to the destruction of Argentina's early liberal progress and opened the way to the antidemocratic regimes that came later in the twentieth century.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; 1 edition (February 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080785669X
• ISBN-13: 978-0807856697
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,046,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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