No Biosociality in India

Medical History, 2010

Biology: Scott and Marshall's authoritative and bestselling Dictionary of Sociology (2009) has no entry for it. There are entries for Wilfred Bion, the Kleinian psychoanalyst, or for sociometry, the almost-forgotten method of measuring social relationships. In place of biology, we find an entry for ‘biological reductionism, or biologism’, a pejorative term indicating the ideology of the deterministic application of biological findings to society. To make things more problematic, biologism has one reminder, Robert Ardrey, successful science-writer of stories of killer-ape human ancestors, very popular between the 1960s and the 1970s. Giants of the real history of biology, in contrast, such as August Weismann, or Theodosius Dobzhansky, are not even considered. And it is actually very difficult to imagine that Ardrey's speculation was somehow more relevant to the sociological imagination than Weismann's displacement of Lamarckism, or Dobzhansky's populational rethinking of race with its massive impact on post-1945 social sciences. We begin on this admittedly somewhat polemical note not to start a further fire on the already troubled sociology/biology border. So many wars have already been fought, so much hostility has already been displayed that we really don't feel the need. Rather, in introducing this collection dedicated to Sociology-Biology Relations in the Twenty-First Century we wanted to bring to focus at the outset something that seems to us one of the very sources of so many problems, namely: What do sociologists think of when they say the word ‘biology’ both as a way of conceiving vital processes (life as such in its manifold dynamics) and as a form of expert knowledge (biology as an academic discipline)? Furthermore, who do they cite as examples if not exemplars of this biology in question?

Biosocial Matters: Rethinking Sociology-Biology Relations in the Twenty-First Century features a collection of readings from scholars in the vanguard of a reframing of biology/society debates within the sociological disciplines. After years of disagreements bordering on open hostility between the social and life sciences, there appear to be encouraging signs of reconciliation—a shift in terrain where both “sides” of the erstwhile dispute are questioning their very premises. Biosocial Matters: Rethinking the Sociology-Biology Relations in the Twenty-First Century features a collection of readings from scholars on the vanguard of a reframing of biology/society debates within the sociological disciplines. Posing the question of whether a new biosocial terrain is indeed emerging, contributors explore ways this shift may contribute to a “revitalization” of sociology—and the biological imagination as well. Initial readings frame the battle lines through theoretical and historically-oriented contributions that reveal present renegotiations of the biological/social boundaries. Highlights include Tel Aviv University’s Eva Jablonka writing on cultural epigenetics and Exeter’s Tim Newton on the turn to biology. A final section focuses on in-depth analyses of epigenetics and neuroscience, two key frontiers in current sociology/biology debates. Readings include Luca Chiapperino and Giuseppe Testa of the University of Milan writing about the epigenomic self in personalized medicine, the University of Aberdeen’s John Bone on the nature and structure of neurosociology’s promise, Lisa Blackman of Goldsmiths College on the challenges of new bio/psycho/sociologies, and more. Pioneering and timely, Biosocial Matters offers illuminating insights into the long-overdue realignment between nature and sociology in the emergent decades of the twenty-first century.

Developing World Bioethics, 2004

In this paper I argue for the universality of morality as against and in spite of the plurality and inevitable relativity of human cultures. Universalisability is the litmus test of moral authenticity whereas culture tends to impose an egocentric predicament. I argue equally for the equality of cultures qua cultures and of the importance of different cultural perspectives, given the limitations of each and every particular culture, in a balanced and wholesome appreciation of moral issues, particularly issues of cross-cultural relevance. I then try to anchor my reflections on a few topical ethical issues of cross-cultural relevance which have been the subject of controversy in recent times.

American Anthropologist, 2009

Biology Unmoored: Melanesian Reflections on Life and Biotechnology is a provocative attempt on the part of Sandra Bamford to further destabilize, in true Schneiderian fashion, the taken-for-granted biologicocentric paradigm underpinning the understanding of personhood, relatedness, attachment, morality, and mortality in the so-called West. The book will be of much interest to scholars working in fields as diverse as kinship studies, science and technology studies (STS), environmental studies, Pacific studies, and social theory broadly configured. The book is well written and engaging and would be suitable for upper-division undergraduate students and graduate students alike. What is perhaps most novel about the book is Bamford's attempt to provide a rather new twist on what is now a classic anthropological move-the putting into question of otherwise unquestioned assumptions about the truths of human existence inherent in "Western" cultural logicby drawing on not one but two contrasting conceptual frameworks. One of these frameworks arises from ongoing struggles within contemporary communities and popular culture in the "West" to make ethical sense of the relevance, applicability, and importance of recent innovations in biotechnology. The second stems from a putatively nonbiological vision of human existence and sociality as articulated in Kamea communities in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in which Bamford conducted almost three years of field research. In challenging "old" understandings of biological relatedness, reproduction, personhood, and life, the "new" biology of biotechnology has significantly put into question what were previously held to be unquestionable truths about the human condition: namely, that sex is necessarily linked to reproduction; that relatedness is understood in terms of shared biological substance; and that individ

In an archaeological spirit this paper comes back to a founding event in the construction of the twentieth-century episteme, the moment at which the life-and the social sciences parted ways and intense boundary-work was carried out on the biology/society border, with significant benefits for both sides. Galton and Weismann for biology, and Alfred Kroeber for anthropology delimit this founding moment and I argue, expanding on an existing body of historical scholarship, for an implicit convergence of their views. After this excavation, I look at recent developments in the life sciences, which I have named the 'social turn' in biology (Meloni, 2014), and in particular at epigenetics with its promise to destabilize the social/biological border. I claim here that today a different account of 'the biological' to that established during the Galton–Kroeber period is emerging. Rather than being used to support a form of boundary-work, biology has become a boundary object that crosses previously erected barriers, allowing different research communities to draw from it. The greater fault is not with the biologists who have explained historical phenomena by organic processes, but with the sociologists who have accepted and welcomed these alien explanations. (Kroeber, 1916b: 34)

Anthropological Quarterly, 2007

This essay introduces the concept of "biodiplomacy" through a combination of philosophical reflection, historical and etymological arguments, media reports, critical analyses of bioethics controversies, and the author's own participation as a "diplomat" of anthropology for an international commission about science and society. It explores how the notion of corps diplomatique that once represented the Enlightenment ideal of an exclusive, "family of diplomats" is apparent today as the diffusion of an open, more participatory "global talk." The effects of this development on critical social theory are discussed under the rubric of "biodiplomatica"; particular attention is paid to (i) the immanence of critique as a relational mode of action for interventions in public anthropology, and (ii) the theorist's role in seeking to engage a critically reflexive anthropology of bioethics.

SN Social Sciences, 2023

The pressing global challenges facing humanity highlight the urgency of reconciling medicine, society and ecology. By shedding light on the role of theories of translation and justification, the intention here is to show the potential usefulness of an in situ bioethics that reconciles practices in medicine and ecology. Science and policy should be reassembled in hybrid working theories developed, adopted and reframed by/for Society. Yet, a major challenge emerges from translating ethics, sciences, and economics claims, both within expert and lay milieus. This paper proposes foundational pillars for operationalizing the Potterian view of global bioethics. Van Rensselaer Potter challenged the perspective that compartmentalizes values, knowledge and laws, proposing ways to bridge them by linking appreciative, descriptive, and normative knowledge. The missing link, however, is a coherent governance process that coordinates the thinking, ordering, and enacting in the world. Based on an extensive revision of the Potterian legacy and action-research case studies, this article applies the Global theoretical view in the complex in situ practice of bioethics. Little known outside the world of academic bioethics, Potter's primarily scientific curriculum helps translate and operationalize the socio-political reflections of notable contemporary philosophers of science and critical social theoreticians such as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, John Rawls, Bruno Latour and Jürgen Habermas. In this era of mass communication, government education programs, and large-scale research funding, I propose a conceptual framework for operating a Community-based Global Bio-Ethics, echoing the 60th anniversary of Habermas' call for The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962).

Journal of Biosocial Science, 2001

Environmental Ethics, 2012