Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-009-01050-4
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 289 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 444 g

Reihe: Science in History

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Roginski, Alexandra

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technikgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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 Maori world; 8. Gardening a Duropean island: phrenologists, whiteness and reform for nationhood; 9. Divinatory science in the city and the bush; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Roginski, Alexandra
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.