Conduct an investigation of Rana Hogarth’s brilliant comparative historical sociology text Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780-1840.
For our fourth discussion board, it will be fruitful to reflect upon the following…
How do ideas take hold and get maintained/reproduced? How do ideas and beliefs become “successful” over time and across contexts – even (or especially) when these ideas and beliefs are inaccurate or harmful? Can we think of examples?
What exactly does Hogarth see going on across the Greater Caribbean and the southern U.S. during this time period (1780-1840) with respect to ‘race’ and medicine? What, so far, seems to be her central comparative historical argument?
What are the connections that Hogarth is analyzing between the medicalization of ‘blackness’ and attempts to secure professional credibility/expertise status among white physicians? It may be helpful to consider our Week 7 lecture discussion of the ‘ideological loop’ here.
