Stirpiculture: Science-Guided Human Propagation and the Oneida Community
Between 1869 and 1879, the communal Christian group the Oneida Community undertook a pioneering eugenics experiment called “stirpiculture” in upstate New York. Stirpiculture resulted in the planned conception, birth, and communal rearing of fifty-eight children, bred from selected members of the One...
Subtitles: | Science, pseudo-science, and fiction |
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Main Author: | |
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Open Library of Humanities$s2024-
[2017]
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In: |
Zygon
Year: 2017, Volume: 52, Issue: 1, Pages: 76-99 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Noyes, John Humphrey 1811-1866
/ Eugenics
/ Oneida Community
/ Birth control
/ Reproduction
/ Experiment
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IxTheo Classification: | AG Religious life; material religion AZ New religious movements CF Christianity and Science |
Further subjects: | B
Oneida Community
B theology and science B Religion B Science B Eugenics B Genetics B Worldview B stirpiculture B John Humphrey Noyes B Natural Theology |
Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | Between 1869 and 1879, the communal Christian group the Oneida Community undertook a pioneering eugenics experiment called “stirpiculture” in upstate New York. Stirpiculture resulted in the planned conception, birth, and communal rearing of fifty-eight children, bred from selected members of the Oneida Community. This article concerns how the Oneida Community's unique approach to religion and science provided the framework for the creation, process, and eventual dissolution of the stirpiculture experiment. The work seeks to expand current understanding of the early history of eugenics in the United States by placing its practice more than two decades earlier than is generally considered. Additionally, this article situates the Community's leader John Humphrey Noyes as an early eugenics and social scientific thinker. Finally, the treatment provides a case study for the transitional period in mid to late nineteenth century America whereby scientific modes of epistemology were accommodated within or supplanted by theological worldviews. |
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ISSN: | 1467-9744 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Zygon
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/zygo.12319 |