List,
I don't have any comments today (not yet) on race--but the post to which I
respond asserts a link between hormones and war. Might I recommend *Genes
and Gender VI: On Peace, War, and Gender* (1991), edited by Betty Rosoff
and Ethel Tobach (Feminist Press). In this book, the research that gives
rise to assertions about the link between hormones and aggression
(violence, etc.) is reviewed and rejected. The fluctuation of hormonal
levels over the course of a day is so highly variable as to make these
studies useless. What is more, theoretically the direction of causality
could just as easily (and more logically) run the other direction, i.e.,
aggressive behavior raises the level of certain hormones. Why I objected
to the post in the first place is precisely because it repeated a idiom of
conservative ideology that is rarely questioned in our society.
Sincerely,
Andrew Austin