Racial Science and British Society, 1930-62

The study of race has been an important feature in British universities for over a hundred years. During this time, academic understanding of what race describes and means has changed and developed as has the purpose of racial study. Once considered the preserve of biologists and physical anthropologists, over the course of the last century the study of race has transferred mostly into social scientific disciplines such as sociology. This book explores this passing of authority on racial matters in the context of international and domestic political issues.

In a period which spans the rise and fall of Nazism, the onset of the Cold War, the birth of Apartheid and the death of legal US segregation, Racial Science and British Society, 1930-62 considers the relationship between science, politics and ideology, arguing that racial scholarship in Britain was shaped in every period by factors outside of science. At the same time it argues that it is possible to see the influence of expert racial scholarship in every significant action of government immigration policy during this period. This major new study of Twentieth-century Britain calls into question the impact of racial ideas on British society and probes into the nature of knowledge production in science.