Eugenics and the settler crisis: Heidi Nicholls, ‘Settler Sociology: Eugenic Responses to Imperial Crises in the 20th Century’, Sociology Lens, 2026 | settler colonial studies blog

Eugenics and the settler crisis: Heidi Nicholls, ‘Settler Sociology: Eugenic Responses to Imperial Crises in the 20th Century’, Sociology Lens, 2026

22May26

Abstract: In the twentieth century, academic concerns about changes in the racial demographics of the United States emanated from the potential crisis of settler colonial decline. In their references to previous empires, stories of contact between people groups, and changes in demographics, settler scholars worked to provide solutions to the ever‐present threat of racial difference. Two variants of eugenic responses aimed to predict the relationship between people(s) and the empire‐state. Early US sociology was central to these efforts. Scholars trained at the University of Chicago combined eugenic ideas with settler colonial ideologies of Indigenous erasure and elimination. They worked for the empire‐state as social scientists tasked with predicting the stability of the empire through notions of race. They argued for laws and programs that either criminalized interracial unions or promoted racial amalgamation. Seemingly contradictory strategies shared an ideology that the greatest crisis was the instability of the empire‐state. The impetus for eugenic projects, that states that not only rule over populations but can and should work to produce a certain kind of population amenable and useful to state rule, is still with us today.

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