THE DANGERS OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION IN THE US EUGENICS MOVEMENT

This article offers a new synthesis of the role of geography and geographical thinking in the inception and diffusion of the U.S. eugenics movement and its relevance in social and racial sentiments today. This role was supported by the salience of the geographical imagination and the influence of eminent Ivy League-educated elites during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Moreover, the significance here is that the eugenics movement and its geographical imagination transferred into the implementation of policy, notably immigration restriction, anti-miscegenation, and sterilization laws. The geographical imagination provided fodder for xenophobic, anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-immigrant public sentiments that left a powerful legacy to this today.