Re: Race: real or imagined? (fwd) overall comment

        I agree with Boris (see below.)  In another recent message, he gets
at the issue of how certain discourses get perceived as the ONLY discourses
of a science, which causes a great deal of misappropriated blames for very
marginal (or sometimes otherwise) philosophies that lurk in the shadows of
scientific studies, as well as confusion about 'what people are politically
doing' when they are talking about sociobiology, or neoclassical economics,
etc. 

        For those interested in a 'middle path' between the social
construction of genetic determinism (yes, that is what I said) on one side
and a social construction of everything on the other side, I suggest at
least the opening chapter of:

        Kemper, Theodore D.  1990.  Social Structure and Testosterone.
London: Rutgers University Press.

        which lays out a short literature review of the battle, and Kemper's
studies of the intersections of biology, sociology, and the desire to
operationalize the relationship in EMPIRICAL terms of endrocrinology
(instead of battling with the social constructions of both sides).

        I would appreciate any related books that bridge sociology and
biology. Thanks.  

        I would say that we could round this up by saying that what we seem
to have some consensus on is an opposition to any offhanded philosophical
scientific reductionism with political discourse aspirations--whether
entirely social or entirely biological--which attempts to 'explain away'
instead of explain.  

        For another example, just because I (or anyone) disagrees with
Wallerstein fails to make me any less interested in the empirical data on
intersocietal relationships that are coughed up by 'world systems theory.'  
;-)

Cheers, 

Mark Whitaker
University of Wisconsin-Madison

P.S. - And watch out. ;-) I'll threaten to send my sociobiology literature
review message once more, which would show how varied the empirical field
and theoretical viewpoints are in sociobiology--beyond this 'two battling
bugs in a small jar' conception of sociobiology which typically take up the
field.  The social reductionists and the biological reductions are frankly
ONLY two MINOR though loud areas in sociobiology that are defined less off
what they actually research, and only on whom they oppose ideologically and
philosophically. Philosophies seem to require a sparring partner and they
come in pairs, or beg to generate one through crass reductionisms.

        As we have seen,  unfortunately, the conceptions of sociobiology
tend to get wrapped around discussing this strictly philsophical 'debate' as
containing all of sociobiological research, by framing it as only some form
of a generalizable philosophy (with 'pro-' or 'con-' debates about
sociobiology as an interpretive framework) instead of discussing its
research, which as Wilson does point out has very "tortuous" linkages making
it a strained mental acrobatics of reductionism than a work of empirical
analysis.        
        
     I've established a listserve for these dull empirical topics and
interscientific conceptions. Anyone interested should contact me and I'll
send them some information by email. Otherwise, I'm looking forward to WSN
going back to WSN.

   
        


At 08:47 PM 3/16/00 -0500, Boris Stremlin wrote:
>It is testament to the high level of this debate that people first pick
>fights in order to then regurgitate past profundities.  What we have here
>is a persistent failure to distinguish between disciplinary entities with
>an explicit political agenda and individual theories which receive
>empirical confirmation.  To say a rejection of sociobiology
>necessarily constitutes a rejection of all research by sociobiologists is
>the same as saying that an anti-Darwinist rejects the theory of evolution
>(A.R. Wallace, a cofounder of said theory, was an anti-Darwinist).
>
>-- 
>Boris Stremlin
>bc70219@binghamton.edu
>
>