 |
|
 |
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
Is a biological dimension relevant to the study of culture? Amid knee-jerk accusations of right-wing ravings, it is a pleasant surprise to see a card-carrying liberal--a Vice-Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, no less--taking up the issue in an intelligent, well-informed, and stimulating way. Feminist and political radical Barbara Ehrenreich finds a deplorable trend within academia to "dismiss the possibility that there are any biologically based commonalities that cut across cultural differences" (12). Characteristic objections to human universals is that they are a false set of constraints or "natural limits of human functioning" (Marshall Sahlins), "essentialist" (John Dupre), or "ethnocentric" (Judith Butler). They cut no ice with Ehrenrich and Michigan ethnologist Janet McIntosh.
For starters, they point out, the absence of a shared nature is also a theory of human nature--one that sets humans essentially apart from the rest of nature, and "an ideological outlook eerily similar to that of religious creationism" (12). While the critique of "the misuses of biology" is useful and valid, they argue, the postmodern critique of biology itself ("a weariness of meta-narratives," "a horror of essentialism," and "a fixation on 'power' as the only force limiting human freedom") is not (13). Biology is not a dictatorship, and we need a notion of human nature for meaningful social advocacy. In the words of Barbara Epstein, History of Consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz, "If there is no human nature outside social construction, no needs or capacities other than those constructed by a particular discourse, then there is no basis for social criticism and no reason for protest or rebellion."
The key recognition here is that cognition is the missing link between biology and culture--and cognition undeniably has a biological dimension. The issue is not how to keep the determinist, essentialist, and reductionist threats of biology away from cultural studies, but to develop a conceptual framework or blended space broad enough to handle both discourses. We need to acknowledge that it has never been done successfully before, and that it needs doing.
An article like this, by a prominent feminist and left-wing intellectual, is perhaps a sign of the opposite of what it proclaims: a trend towards an increasing mainstream acceptance of the relevance of a biological dimension to the study of culture. "You need a high tolerance of ambiguity to believe both that culture shapes things and that we have a lot in common," social psychologist Phoebe Ellsworth points out. But the meeting of human universals and culture is "where the interesting questions begin."
Francis Steen
June 1997
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
