In the name of the Czech nation: Education and Eugenics in the Late Imperial Period

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Authors

SHMIDT Victoria

Year of publication 2014
Type Conference abstract
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Education

Citation
Description Exploring any social practice in during the late imperial period in the Czech lands cannot avoid engaging with the pervasive process of nation-building and nationalism. Similarly, the discourses around child welfare, development and deviances should be viewed not only as the outcome of the Czech Enlightenment, but also as the constitutive elements of a proto-eugenic cultural environment, one which beginning with second half of the nineteenth century favored the dissemination of theories of human improvement, particularly with respect to education and social care. This text aims to trace the range of discourses regarding children and childhood among Czech social scientists in the late imperial period. These discourses did not disappear with the collapse of the Habsburg rule; on the contrary, they had survived the new political order, playing an important role in shaping Czechoslovak eugenic theories about special education and social care during the interwar period.
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