The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into
character and intellect through external 'reading' of the head. In the
transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia
and Aotearoa New Zealand, popular phrenologists - figures who often
hailed from the margins - performed their science of touch and cranial
jargon everywhere from mechanics' institutions to public houses. In this
compelling work, Alexandra Roginski recounts a history of this everyday
practice, exploring how it featured in the fates of people living in,
and moving through, the Tasman World. Innovatively drawing on historical
newspapers and a network of archives, she traces the careers of a
diverse range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered. By
analysing the actions at play in scientific episodes through
ethnographic, social and cultural history, Roginski considers how this
now-discredited science could, in its own day, yield fleeting power and
advantage, even against a backdrop of large-scale dispossession and
social brittleness.