Alexandra A Barmpouti

This book sheds light on the history of Greek eugenics during the post-war period. At this time, eugenics had already been condemned by international declarations. AlexandraBarmpouti, however, challenges the assumption that eugenics disappeared and confirms the continuity of eugenics after the Second World War. She looks at the Greek paradigm because it included the establishment of a eugenics society in 1953 and revealed the contact of Greek eugenicists with renowned British and American birth control advocates. The book covers for the first time the untold history of contraception in Greece during the 1950s and 1960s when the use of female contraceptives was forbidden. It thus argues that birth control was ideologically based on eugenics. In the same context, the book discusses significant breakthroughs related to eugenics, such as the rise of the feminist movement and the advance of human genetics that took place during this period.

The Greek biopolitics of reproduction during the postwar period was determined by the demographic figures. Instead of a rise in births, Greece experienced a constant downward trajectory of the birth rate throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The country also witnessed population instability due to the massive immigration in the 1960s and the wave of repatriation in the next decade. The article explores the state's bio-politics in order to achieve demographic equilibrium by adopting a pronatalist perspective. The construction of biopolitics was influenced by the consecutive wars of the first half of the century resulting in the denial of any means suspected of reducing the birth rate, such as contraception and abortion. In parallel, the article investigates the attempts of a group of eugenicists to impose to the state authorities their own views on reproduction control. The key debates were birth control and abortion because these issues of reproduction were entangled with major social fermentations caused by urbanization, modernization, eugenics, and feminism. The Constitution of 1974 was instrumental in changing the biopolitics of reproduction by introducing equal rights to men and women. It provoked a series of legal transformations with regard to marriage, family, and reproduction.

Hand in hand with the modernisation process, the institutionalisation of eugenics in Greece was accomplished by the establishment of the Hellenic Eugenics Society in 1953. Engaging with the history of post-war Greek eugenics, this paper analyses the circumstances under which eugenics emanated from the international birth control movement. The article reveals the untold history of the network among Greek, British and American eugenicists during the period from the Fifties to the Seventies. By focusing on the activities of the Hellenic Eugenics Society, the local interpretation of global issues, such as contraception, overpopulation and feminism is explored. Unlike the interwar period, when eugenicists focused on biologically and socially improving the race or class, post-war eugenicists aimed at influencing personal decision-making regarding marriage and reproduction. The Greek eugenicists, most of them renowned physicians, used their prestige to achieve this goal.

Ομιλία για την ιστορική πορεία της ιατρικής έρευνας για τη Μεσογειακή Αναιμία, κυρίως στην Ελλάδα. Η πρώιμη περίοδος ιατρικών ερευνών για τη διάγνωση και θεραπεία της ασθένειας διαρκεί από το 1925 μέχρι το 1950, η δεύτερη περίδος από το 1950 μέχρι το 1975 και η τελευταία από το 1975 μέχρι σήμερα.

In A Human Garden: French Policy and the Transatlantic Legacies of Eugenic Experimentation, PaulAndré Rosental deploys an exceptional case study of applied eugenics, Ungemach garden city in
Strasbourg, to discuss a range of issues in the history of French eugenics. This eugenic
community was established in the early 1920s and existed until the 1980s. This was a
neighborhood specially designed to host a small number of young couples and families--with
specific characteristics in terms of age, health, and fertility--according to eugenic principles. The
ultimate goal of Ungemach was to form an ideal community with healthy adults and children, a
clean and safe environment, and qualitative and quantitative progress across generations.