Captain George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers and the Prehistory of the IUSSP

Landis MacKellar and Bradley W. Hart

Population and Development Review, 2014, vol. 40, issue 4, 653-675

Abstract: type="main">

Captain George Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, Secretary General of the International Union for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems (IUSIPP, 1928–ca. 1942), the precursor of today's International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP, 1947–present), was a central figure in population science during the 1930s. With his pro-Nazi activism, anti-Semitism, Red-baiting, and failure to leave any intellectual mark of consequence, he is an idiosyncratic and in some ways unattractive subject. However, an examination of Pitt-Rivers's role as Secretary General reveals a wealth of information about the IUSIPP as it lurched toward collapse. It casts light, as well, on the struggle for scientific legitimacy between eugenic racialists and reformers in the 1930s, a struggle in which he played a controversial and divisive role. Using a combination of newly discovered and old archival material, this article traces Pitt-Rivers's involvement with the Union, the British eugenics establishment, Nazi population science, and far-right British politics during this turbulent decade when demography emerged as an international discipline.

Date: 2014
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