From boundary-work to boundary object: how biology left and re-entered the social sciences

Abstract

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.

Social structures, power and resistance in monist sociology: (New) materialist insights

“…While sociological analysis has exposed the dualist schemata used in daily life, it has not been immune to the seductions of binary oppositions itself. Sociological dualism was manifest in Marx’s dichotomy of labour/capital and Durkheim’s distinction between traditional and modern societies, but most pervasively in the dualism of agency/structure and a nature/culture divide that has arguably underpinned the disciplinary development and professional closure of sociology itself ( Benton, 1991 ; Meloni, 2016 ). Many of these sociological binaries have been the subject of fierce debate within the discipline ( Karakayali, 2015 ).…”

“…Sociology’s self-positioning in relation to these binaries made it the target for post-structuralist theorists, who ruthlessly deconstructed the oppositions. By privileging culture over nature (for example, by emphasising gender – a cultural formation – at the expense of biological sex) sociology established the credentials of the social world, which is of course, the discipline’s chosen subject-matter ( Game, 1991 : 33, Meloni, 2016 ). The opposing elements of the agency/structure binary – endlessly re-worked in structuralist, interactionist, historical materialist, structuration and realist theories ( DeLanda, 2006 : 9-10) – has been criticised for generating two contrary tendencies within sociology.…”

Epigenetics, Representation, and Society

“…During the last century, the richness and symmetry of this outlook have wavered, at times reaching contrasting extremes: from many‐sidedness and great flexibility to rigid geneticization. Galton's, Weismann's, and Johannsen's work and views of separation between the internal, inflexible, deeper and the external, weaker, shallower, together with the later amalgamation of genetics and Darwinism, played an important role in the ‘rigidization’ of heredity, influencing the dynamics not only within the biological sciences but also within the social sciences and anthropology (Meloni , 66). The discovery of the double helix in the 1950s and the following advances in molecular biology, among other aspects, further affected the tides and currents in and around genetics and strengthened the ‘hard inheritance’ outlook.…”

“…This baffling dichotomy could be viewed as a reflection (or extension) of the broader nature vs. nurture debate and is indicative of the complex relationship between science and society. The far‐reaching demarcation lines separating the internal‐hereditary and the external‐environmental‐experiential , drawn with the rise of ‘hard’ genetics (as fashioned by Francis Galton and August Weismann in the second half of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth centuries) and permeating not only the life sciences but also the social sciences and the humanities, have begun to be reevaluated in light of contemporary developments in biology (Meloni , 61–78). This reconsideration, however, has—perhaps—not reached its fullness yet but is waiting to be better understood and adequately realized in all spheres.…”

Sustainability, feminist posthumanism and the unusual capacities of (post)humans

“…Culture/nature dualism has supplied post-Enlightenment philosophers, scientists and social scientists with a neat way to set limits on the respective concerns of the social and natural sciences (Fox and Alldred, 2016;Barad 1996, 181;Braidotti 2013, 3;Meloni 2016). However, when exploring issues of embodiment, anthropogenic climate change, or the effects of the built environment on well-being, such a distinction becomes problematic (Lidskog and Waterton 2016, 399).…”