Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

AvAlexandra Roginski

Häftad, Engelska, 2025

Del i serien Science in History

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Beskrivning

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.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2025-02-27
Mått:152 x 229 x 17 mm
Vikt:474 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Science in History
Antal sidor:290
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781009010504

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Mer om författaren

Dr Alexandra Roginski is a historian and writer based on Wurundjeri Country in Melbourne, Australia, and a Visiting Fellow of the State Library of New South Wales and Deakin University.

Recensioner i media

'Marvellous! Roginski puts phrenology into colonial life with skill, elegance and deep scholarly commitment. The spaces, people and knowledges here - vernacular, itinerant, antipodean - make us think freshly about popular sciences and their nineteenth-century performances.' Alison Bashford, University of New South Wales

Innehållsförteckning

1. Bumps on the road: phrenological touts and travellers; 2. Massaging the town: phrenological ordeals and audiences; 3. Tactics on stage: indigenous performers, cultural exchange and negotiated power; 4. A godly touch of male power: phrenology, mesmerism and gendered authority; 5. Talking heads on a Murray River mission; 6. Black phrenologists, black masks; 7. Popular science in a changing Māori world; 8. Gardening a Duropean island: phrenologists, whiteness and reform for nationhood; 9. Divinatory science in the city and the bush; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.