1st Edition

Histories of the Normal and the Abnormal Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity

By Waltraud Ernst Copyright 2007
    304 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    304 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This fascinating volume tackles the history of the terms 'normal' and 'abnormal'. Originally meaning 'as occurring in nature', normality has taken on significant cultural gravitas and this book recognizes and explores that fact.

    The essays engage with the concepts of the normal and the abnormal from the perspectives of a variety of academic disciplines – ranging from art history to social history of medicine, literature, and science studies to sociology and cultural anthropology. The contributors use as their conceptual anchors the works of moral and political philosophers such as Canguilhem, Foucault and Hacking, as well as the ideas put forward by sociologists including Durkheim and Illich.

    With contributions from a range of scholars across differing disciplines, this book will have a broad appeal to students in many areas of history.

    The normal and the abnormal. Historical and conceptual perspectives on norms and normativity

    WALTRAUD ERNST

    Invisible friends: Questioning the representation of the court dwarf in Hapsburg Spain

    JANET RAVENSCROFT

     

    From ‘monstrous’ to ‘abnormal’: The case of conjoined twins in the nineteenth century

    SARAH MITCHELL

     

    Eccentric lives: Character, characters and curiosities in Britain, c. 1760-1900

    JAMES GREGORY

     

    Constructing the common type: Physiognomic norms and the notion of ‘civic usefulness’, from Lavater to Galton

    LUCY HARTLEY

     

    Norms of beauty and ugliness in French culture

    NICOLA COTTON

     

    Made to measure? Tailoring and the ‘normal’ body in nineteenth-century France.

    ALISON MATTHEWS DAVID

     

    ‘A masculine mythology suppressing and distorting all the facts’: British women contesting the concept of the male-as-norm, 1870-1930

    LESLEY A. HALL

     

    Interpreting abnormal psychology in the late nineteenth century: William James’s spiritual crisis

    FRANCIS NEARY

     

    Can kinship be designed and still be normal?

    The curious case of child adoption

    ELLEN HERMAN

     

    Flexible norms? The case of diabetes mellitus

    CHRISTIANE SINDING

     

    A matter of degree: The normalisation of hypertension, circa 1940 – 2000

    CARSTEN TIMMERMANN

     

    Deviant roles, normal lives: Why every piazza needs its own ‘madman’

    SARA BERGSTRESSER

    Biography

    Waltraud Ernst