Measuring Immorality: Social Inquiry and the Problem of Illegitimacy

This book examines how social science transforms a biological event--a birth--into a social and moral problem. Drawing on Foucault's archaeology of knowledge, the book stresses the role of statistics and other truth-telling discourses in the birth and growth of the illegitimacy problem since the early nineteenth century. Chapters explore the diverse discursive origins of illegitimacy's negative meanings--expense, racial inferiority, social disorder, death, mental incompetence, fatherlessness and selfishness. The book offers an international perspective.