on admitting to intellectual infidelity

I'm a sociology grad student. It's highly improper to court the come-ons of sociobiology. And to some extent I completely understand all the proverbial hackle-raising. If taken to certain places, the theory does risk Social Darwinism. Some [mostly male] proponents have even attempted to justify fixed gender roles on supposed biological, evolutionary bases (to the point of, at one extreme, claiming that a certain violent, predatory behaviour is 'hard-wired' in men). But even I sometimes grow weary of the naysaying coming so often from the very bosoms - sociology and feminism - in which I nestle myself these days.


To be perfectly honest, I loathe the whole nature vs. nurture 'debate'. Mostly because it's yet another one of those typical binaries or dualisms that Western intellectual discourse still can't kick the habit of getting into. We have to be the most black-and-white, down-the-line, everything has only two sides kind of culture in the whole sweep of human history. And yet we keep thinking this is a reliable measure for understanding the world. Sigh. Enlightenment anachronisms die hard. Very hard.


Seriously, if you're a theorist ever bothering to weigh in on this pointless, first grader 'debate' (a topic that I'm forced, much to my chagrin, to grade first year student papers on year in and year out, like a stay in purgatory), I will applaud you if you're not afraid to just stand up and say what most people who aren't dualistic militants realised a long time ago. Which is basically: "hey guys, did you ever think maybe there's no debate here at all? How about we settle this right now with one crazy notion you might not have considered in all your squabbling. You ready for it? What if human behaviour is both nature and nurture? You know, what if it's a nice old complex, convoluted mixture of both? Just like weather systems. Or the workings of the body for that matter. Complex and intricately inter-related in its mechanisms. Even crazier still, what if there is no separation between these two? What if 'biology' and 'society' are the same composite parts of one big system shaping human life? We are a social animal, after all."  Enough with this nature/nurture crap.

To my mind, at least some aspects of sociobiology are hinting at the intimate links - and even bringing down the artificial divides - between evolutionary biology and social behaviour or structure, without entirely reducing the latter to a mere 'function' of the former. Or maybe this is just because I see things from both 'sides' from the outset? I may be a sociology grad student, but I began my 'life' as a health sciences undergrad. So maybe I'm just plain sympathetic to seeing things across fields. Or, you know, across the mind ghettoes that are the 'faculties'.

Sociobiologists: as long as you don't try to hide behind the imagined [I want to say phallocentric, 'objective' male observer] 'purity' of science to make claims which support whatever status quo you feel - subconsciously or not - to be threatened (like gender roles, or white middle class hegemony),  I am happy to watch your space. Happy, even, to look with interest at how we can enrich our understandings of human behaviour and human social structures through an evolutionary perspective, where biology is not only in the social, but the social is also thoroughly imprinting upon biology. Just don't get fascist or excessively reductionist on me, and we're good.

Let's break down those proverbial walls.