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Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s
Pacific Colony, a Southern California institution established to care for the “feebleminded,” justified the incarceration, sterilization, and forced mutilation of some of the most vulnerable members of society from the 1920s through the 1950s. Institutional records document the convergence of ableism and racism in Pacific Colony. Analyzing a vast archive, Natalie Lira reveals how political concerns over Mexican immigration—particularly ideas about the low intelligence, deviant sexuality, and inherent criminality of the “Mexican race”—shaped decisions regarding the treatment and reproductive future of Mexican-origin patients. Laboratory of Deficiency documents the ways Mexican-origin people sought out creative resistance to institutional control and offers insight into how race, disability, and social deviance have been called upon to justify the confinement and reproductive constraint of certain individuals in the name of public health and progress.
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Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s
Pacific Colony, a Southern California institution established to care for the “feebleminded,” justified the incarceration, sterilization, and forced mutilation of some of the most vulnerable members of society from the 1920s through the 1950s. Institutional records document the convergence of ableism and racism in Pacific Colony. Analyzing a vast archive, Natalie Lira reveals how political concerns over Mexican immigration—particularly ideas about the low intelligence, deviant sexuality, and inherent criminality of the “Mexican race”—shaped decisions regarding the treatment and reproductive future of Mexican-origin patients. Laboratory of Deficiency documents the ways Mexican-origin people sought out creative resistance to institutional control and offers insight into how race, disability, and social deviance have been called upon to justify the confinement and reproductive constraint of certain individuals in the name of public health and progress.
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Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s

Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s

by Natalie Lira
Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s
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Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s

Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s

by Natalie Lira

Overview

Pacific Colony, a Southern California institution established to care for the “feebleminded,” justified the incarceration, sterilization, and forced mutilation of some of the most vulnerable members of society from the 1920s through the 1950s. Institutional records document the convergence of ableism and racism in Pacific Colony. Analyzing a vast archive, Natalie Lira reveals how political concerns over Mexican immigration—particularly ideas about the low intelligence, deviant sexuality, and inherent criminality of the “Mexican race”—shaped decisions regarding the treatment and reproductive future of Mexican-origin patients. Laboratory of Deficiency documents the ways Mexican-origin people sought out creative resistance to institutional control and offers insight into how race, disability, and social deviance have been called upon to justify the confinement and reproductive constraint of certain individuals in the name of public health and progress.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520355682
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 11/30/2021
Series: Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century , #6
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 284
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Natalie Lira is Assistant Professor of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Terminology

Introduction: Life, Labor, and Reproduction at the Intersections of Race, Gender, and Disability
1. The Pacific Plan: Race, Mental Defect, and Population Control in California's Pacific Colony
2. The Mexican Sex Menace: Labor, Reproduction, and Feeblemindedness
3. The Laboratory of Deficiency: Race, Knowledge, and the Reproductive Politics of Juvenile Delinquency
4. Riots, Refusals, and Other Defiant Acts: Resisting Confinement and Sterilization at Pacific Colony
Conclusion: "We Are Not Out of the Dark Ages Yet," and Finding a Way Out

Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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Related Subjects

Social Sciences
Gender Studies
Gender Studies - General & Miscellaneous
Social Sciences
Gender Studies
Gender Studies - General & Miscellaneous

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