title: 'These pushful days': time and disability in the age of eugenics.
abstract: At the turn of the twentieth century, social attitudes toward disability turned sharply negative. An international eugenics movement brought about restrictive immigration laws in the United States and other immigrant nations. One cause was the changing understanding of time, both historical and quotidian, that accompanied the advent of evolutionary theory and a competitive industrial economy. As analogies of competition became culturally ubiquitous, new words to talk about disability such as 'handicapped', 'retarded', 'abnormal', 'degenerate', and 'defective', came into everyday use, all of them explicitly or implicitly rooted in new ways of thinking about time. The intense fear of disability that characterised the eugenics movement grew, in good part, from this new and unsettling vision of time.
authors.affiliation: University of Iowa, USA.
authors.forename: Douglas C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Baynton
mesh_terms: D005075:Biological Evolution; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000266:history*; D004641:Emigration and Immigration / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D005053:Eugenics / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007326:Institutionalization / Q000266:history; D008393:Marriage / Q000266:history / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D011287:Prejudice; D011639:Public Opinion / Q000266:history; D012945:Social Values / Q000266:history*; D013244:Sterilization, Involuntary / Q000266:history; D014481:United States