FROM SELECTIONS SOCIALES TO SOCIAL SELECTION: TRACING THE ORIGIN AND CAREER OF A FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL SCIENCE CONCEPT IN FRANCE, ITALY, BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES FROM THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR TO THE COLD WAR

Abstract

This dissertation argues that “social selection,” a social scientific concept first formulated by the anthropologist Paul Broca and later systematized and popularized by Vacher de Lapouge, had a decisive influence in the development of the American and British social sciences before the Second World War. Through a series of densely argued case studies, ranging from the disciplines of anthropology, ethnology, demography and sociology, I contend that discussions of social selection in the writings of social scientists as varied as Franz Boas and Piritim Sorokin were integral to their social theory and their social science. Writers used social selection to define the limits of the natural and to describe key facets of their own social theory. My discussions of social selection also show key conceptual continuities in the history of the social sciences while also using discussions of social selection to interrogate under-analyzed aspects of a variety of important figures