One of the characteristics of the eugenic movement was the formation of an institutionalized structure. This was initiated with Francis Galton, but it is in the United States that eugenics acquires institutional formatting that would serve as model for various eugenics initiatives in other parts of the world. In this text we intend to analyze some of the conditions that contributed for eugenics to be presented as a scientific proposal of social control of traces or characteristics considered genetically determined.
Eugenics; Eugenics institutions; Social control of genetic characteristics; Race; Racial improvement