Citizens and scientists: toward a gendered history of scientific practice in post-revolutionary France.
Because the French Revolution failed to produce a widely acceptable definition of citizenship, the limits of manhood suffrage in the early nineteenth century were uncertain. Social practices, in particular scientific activity, served as claims to the status of citizen. By engaging in scientific pastimes, bourgeois Frenchmen asserted that they possessed the rationality and autonomy that liberal theorists associated both with manliness and with civic capacity. However, bourgeois science was never a stable signifier of masculinity or of competence. As professional science emerged, the bourgeois amateur increasingly became the feminised object of satire rather than the sober and meritorious citizen-scientist.
Kent State Univ.
C E
CE
Harrison
D002961:Civil Rights / Q000191:economics / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000523:psychology; D019513:Feminism / Q000266:history; D005602:France / Q000208:ethnology; D005783:Gender Identity; D049672:History, 19th Century; D007899:Leisure Activities / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology; D008571:Men / Q000193:education / Q000523:psychology; D012108:Research Personnel / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D012586:Science / Q000191:economics / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D012919:Social Behavior; D012923:Social Class; D012930:Social Dominance; D012933:Social Identification; D012958:Societies, Scientific / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history; D014930:Women / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D014933:Women's Rights / Q000191:economics / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence