A discipline in peril: Sociology’s future hinges on curing its biophobia

Ellis, Lee M.

doi:10.1007/bf02692016

Cited by 78 publications

(44 citation statements)

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“…Similarly, former President of the ASA Massey (2002, p. 1) called for a deeper examination of "the biological foundations upon which our behavior ultimately rests." Withholding some notable exceptions (e.g., van den Berghe, 1975van den Berghe, , 1990Ellis, 1977Ellis, , 1995Ellis, , 1996Lopreato and Crippen, 1999;Horne, 2004;Hopcroft, 2005Hopcroft, , 2016aHuber, 2007;Turner et al, 2015;Hopcroft and Martin, 2016;Marshall, 2016;Mazur, 2016;Niedenzu et al, 2016;Walsh and Yun, 2016;Aunger, 2017;Daly and Perry, 2017;Montagu, 2017), we echo Lizardo and Massey's concern that the discipline has remained steadfast in its rejection of biological explanatory factors (see Ellis, 1995;Lizardo, 2014;Walsh and Yun, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 62%

“…Machalek and Martin, 2014, p. 3) over psychological concepts which support evolutionary theory led the discipline to become partial in their use of psychological research and end up, at least in the upper echelons of their publication circuits, implicitly endorsing a view of thought and action which ignores many aspects of humans' evolved nature-except for, superficially, their capacity for "sociality" (for example, see Epstein, 2007;Piiroinen, 2014). By framing the individual thought process as largely socialized, yet strangely naturally categorizable as automatic and deliberate (see Vaisey, 2009;Williams, 2017b), and naturally as determined by the internalization of particular cultural elements (see Bourdieu, 1984Bourdieu, , 1990Bourdieu, , 1996Williams, 2017a,b), some members of the discipline have come to attribute aspects of our being to immediate cultural contingencies rather than examine the role that evolution and much longer histories of cultural experience play in shaping our inborn, yet admittedly somewhat malleable, dispositions and proclivities (see Ellis, 1996;Walsh and Yun, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Synthesizing Proximate and Distal Levels of Explanation: Toward an Evolution-Informed Sociology

Williams

Montgomery²

2018

Front. Sociol.

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In this paper, we argue that despite the growing acceptance of psychological research by mainstream sociologists, the discipline of sociology remains largely averse to biology. This is because the kind of psychological research that sociologists now utilize tends to rely on the same assumptions of thought, action, and human behavior-broadly construed-that sociologists have on the whole tacitly endorsed since Durkheim's seminal criticism of Kantian categories in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: Namely, that fundamental categories of perception, though naturally experienced, are socially constructed. This assumption is present in both psychological work on schemas and the dual-process model, which continue to be incorporated into sociological analysis at a growing pace. We further demonstrate how sociologists' overall positive reception of this kind of psychological research was facilitated by two factors: the rejection of biological explanations of human behavior and the tacit commitment to social causes by many sociologists in the field throughout the twentieth century. We demonstrate how synthesizing biological research with sociological research can extend existing sociological work by focusing on the study of parenting and crime and deviance. In these subfields, we believe sociologists can gain better understanding of their topics by moving from relatively proximate concerns to more distal ones. We conclude by asserting that seeing individuals' decision-making styles and capacities as a product of both evolved and social processes can lead to the development of more robust and yet parsimonious models of action in the discipline. Doing so need not make sociologists blindly endorse evolutionary approaches to human behavior, but start our theories with a view to both long and short history.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 62%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthesizing Proximate and Distal Levels of Explanation: Toward an Evolution-Informed Sociology

Williams

Montgomery²

2018

Front. Sociol.

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“…A criação da seção Evolução, Biologia e Sociedade no âmbito da Associação Americana de Sociologia em 2004 contraria decisivamente o argumento de Santos (1987). Sem dizer que a crítica dos soció-logos biossociais, expressa em periódicos periféricos do campo sociológico e em livros, à natureza do conhecimento sociológico, à fragmentação decorrente de uma fragilidade por não se comportar como campo científico (ELLIS, 1977(ELLIS, , 1996LOPREATO & CRIPPEN, 1999) estão na contramão do paradigma emergente descrito por Santos (1987).…”

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O Acesso À Justiça Numa Perspectiva Biossocial

Lacerda¹

2012

TOMO

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O artigo problematiza enquadramentos sociológicos da temática do acesso à justiça que se inspiram na agenda de pesquisa proposta por Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Nesse sentido, questiona a maneira como o conceito de classe social é utilizado como variável independente e defende que áreas como a sociobiologia e a psicologia evolucionista têm redefinido conceitos fundamentais para entendermos fenômenos sociais como o acesso à justiça.

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“…On one side, sociology has started to question its 'naturephobic' (Benton, 2001) or 'bio-phobic' attitude (Ellis, 1996;Freese et al, 2003;Bone, 2009), and promote a re-examination of the 'relationship between nature and society' (Benton, 1991;Newton, 2007, p. 1) with the goal 'to recover or develop (new) non-reductionist ways of envisaging' the relationship between the social and the biological (Williams et al, 2003, p. 1). In this context, the promise of a 'productive new rapprochement between sociology and biology' (Franks and Smith, 1999, p. 3) has found today an interesting application in the use of neuroscientific references in the sociology of emotions (Turner, 1999), medicine (Williams, 2010) and the body (Cromby, 2004(Cromby, , 2005(Cromby, , 2007, for instance referring to the new neuroscientific focus on the somatic, visceral dimension of thinking and morality (Damasio, 1999(Damasio, , 2003(Damasio, , 2006(Damasio, /1994see Cromby, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Philosophical implications of neuroscience: The space for a critique

Meloni¹

2011

Subjectivity

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In an intellectual atmosphere still marked by the ideological failures of the twentieth century, the expectations for neuroscience are extremely high, even in fields traditionally sheltered from the seductions of neurobiological explanations, such as political theory, sociology and philosophy. In an attempt to problematize the reception that this neuroscientific vocabulary has received, I provide in this article a cartography of three major lines of philosophical criticism of neuroscience -'conceptual', 'societal' and 'embodied-enactive' -put forward recently by philosophers of different intellectual traditions. Although these criticisms are important in shedding light on some epistemological inconsistencies of the neuroscientific programme, the need remains to supplement this philosophical work with a different kind of critique, one that could address more directly the social and political relevance of neuroscience as well understand our epoch's urge to 'turn neurobiological' previously cultural or sociological phenomena.

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A discipline in peril: Sociology’s future hinges on curing its biophobia

Cited by 78 publications

References 133 publications

Synthesizing Proximate and Distal Levels of Explanation: Toward an Evolution-Informed Sociology

Synthesizing Proximate and Distal Levels of Explanation: Toward an Evolution-Informed Sociology

O Acesso À Justiça Numa Perspectiva Biossocial

Philosophical implications of neuroscience: The space for a critique

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