Pauperism commissions were diverted by racial classification anxieties

Evidence

The two major Commissions of Inquiry on European Pauperism, initiated in 1872 and 1901, that are the subject of this chapter could be read as testimonies to the state’s commitment to social reform. They are replete with recommendations for more and better schools, improved heathcare, and increased pensions for those on the lower rungs of the colonial civil service. Such proposals bulk up these commissions with thousands of pages, but quandaries about race divert their authors’ musings and shift their preoccupations elsewhere. These are less focused on impoverishment than on the task of distinguishing among “an amalgama” of racial groups, their ontological status, their political aspirations, and their changing spatial coordinates. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 815

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels Horkheimer-era Institute finding that group studies targeting objective problems get restructured around ideology/authority questions rather than material conditions.