Measuring immorality : social inquiry and the problem of illegitimacy
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Measuring immorality : social inquiry and the problem of illegitimacy
Cambridge University Press, 1998
- :hc
- :pbk
Available at 11 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p.189-211) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Why do conservative politicians and scholars in Britain, Australia and the United States continue to view rising rates of out-of-wedlock births and teenage pregnancies as a threat to civilised society? This book examines the process by which social science transforms a biological event - a birth - into a social and moral problem. Drawing on Foucault's 'archaeology of knowledge', Reekie stresses the role of statistics and other social-scientific discourses in the emergence of the illegitimacy 'problem' in the early nineteenth century and its continuing cultural significance. The book illustrates the continuity in concerns about illegitimacy, including pressure on the welfare system, fears of racial and intellectual denigration, the detrimental nature of fatherless families, and the association of rising illegitimacy with the supposed selfishness of excessively independent women.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: assessing the problem
- 1. Bastards and children of the parish
- 2. Statistics and the birth of a social problem
- 3. Reproducing at the nation's expense
- 4. Illegitimate genes and racial inferiority
- 5. The immorality of the white working class
- 6. Illegitimate infancy: a deadly risk
- 7. Offspring of feeble and neurotic minds
- 8. Fatherless societies go primitive
- 9. Murphy Brown, feminism and female selfishness
- 10. The possibilities of a postmodern illegitimacy.
by "Nielsen BookData"