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Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality
Typecasting chronicles the emergence of the "science of first impression" and reveals how the work of its creators—early social scientists—continues to shape how we see the world and to inform our most fundamental and unconscious judgments of beauty, humanity, and degeneracy. In this groundbreaking exploration of the growth of stereotyping amidst the rise of modern society...more
Hardcover, 576 pages
Published
October 3rd 2009
by Seven Stories Press
(first published October 1st 2006)
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This staggering 500+ page tome traces how disparity in society has been rationalized and engineered. From idealized aesthetics of art, freak and oddity shows, to criminal profiling, eugenics, and how the thesaurus -- yes, Roget's Thesaurus -- codified various linguistic categories of typecasting and social stratification. This may be one of the most stimulating and useful social history books I've ever read.
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Wow! I went into this book without a clue as to what I wanted to get out of it. At first, reading about the authors, I thought I would put it down immediately. They seemed more liberal than I would care for. But once I started, I couldn't put it down until I finished. This book was really well written and holds a lot of information about how we have come to where we are as a society. Best of all, I finally learned why I'm labeled as a Caucasian. Now I really don't want to check that box.
Very interesting read on how images constructed back in the day in what used to be called "science" -- for example studies of phrenology, the exhibition of "exotic" peoples -- fostered the developments of stereotypes and images in popular culture that are still with us today.
Required for DNA class- This book is very informative. I just read the chapter "Moron's in our midst" and it is frighteningly scary. American used to use Eugenics (pure white race) to forcefully sterilize/incarcerate any human being they thought qualified as a Moron (after taking their very biased/classist test- or after a glance of just "knowing"). So scary Rockerfeller was one of them- these guys were the pre Nazis- The Nazis used all of their information and arguments for cleansing their own...more
Loved this! Smart, well-researched book by two terrific historians (and husband-wife team! how did two married academics do this without killing each other?)on the various forms of prejudice that have imapacted science, art, pop culture, etc.
Wow. The history of these stereotypes, the physiology and effort that went into justifying superiority and inferiority is laid in detail. A REALLY thick book, and very illuminating.
So far a good survey / summary of a lot of other material/concepts out there (Sander Gilman, Freud, Foucault, Galton, Fred Turner, ). Feeling like a useful undergrad textbook
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