The Making of a Good White - E-thesis - Helsinki.fi

doctors to exercise care in issuing such statements.” (CHL, SWR:
1949.)
Since the social workers could contest the doctors’ opinion, the power of
the medical profession was not absolute. It was, however, not a common
occurrence. Around this time a caste of the professionally ill emerged in
the Village.
“Both Mr. and Mrs. S.’s health should be taken into consideration
when attempting to judge the family. A full medical examination would
be necessary. They, however, exaggerate their ill health, as a method
to escape their responsibilities and to obtain money from every possible
source.” (CHL, SWR: 1948.)
Evidently a doctor who would co-operate with the Company was needed.
Medical practitioners therefore moved into the area in 1949. (CHL, SWR:
1949.)
This process of medicalisation and the arrival of the medical authorities
had several implications. While the residents were better taken care
of, they were also supervised more intensively regarding bodily issues.
They received effective health education: prevention of tuberculosis was
made an issue, and campaigns against alcoholism were also launched,
but the medical intervention helped the uplifters to penetrate their lives
even more intensely. It helped to form the category of a good white and
to determine the boundaries of wanted and unwanted embodiment even
better. The residents, however, also grew accustomed to using medical
opinions as weapons in the battles between themselves and the Company,
and in their attempts to increase their social position. These can be seen
as the first instances, where the residents of the suburb learned to use the
middle-class desire to uplift them to their own advantage.
Paradoxically, while the residents were kept far from direct power over
their own lives, they were still expected to develop into economically autonomous,
competent and productive citizens. Social workers evaluated
the manifestation of these prized qualities by looking at the level of internalisation
of body techniques in the correct external presentation of self.
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