Toward a Biosocial Science

Toward a Biosocial Science
Author: Alexander Riley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-05-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000376214

Sociology is in crisis. While other disciplines have taken on board the revolutionary discoveries driven by evolutionary biology and psychology, genomics and behavioral genetics, and the neurosciences, sociology has ignored these advances and embraced a biophobia that threatens to drive the discipline into marginality. This book takes its place in a rich tradition of efforts to integrate sociological thinking into the world of the biological sciences that can be traced to the origins of the discipline, and that took on modern form beginning a generation ago in the works of thinkers such as E.O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Joseph Lopreato, and Richard Machalek. It offers an accessible introduction to rethinking sociological science in consonance with these contemporary biological revolutions. From the standpoint of a biosociology rooted in the single most important scientific theory touching on human life, the Darwinian theory of natural selection, the book sketches an evolutionary social science that would enable us to properly attend to basic questions of human nature, human behavior, and human social organization. Individual chapters take on such topics as: The roots and nature of human sociality; the origins of morality in human social life and an evolutionary perspective on human interests, reciprocity, and altruism; the sex difference in our species and what it contributes to an explanation of sociological facts; the nature of stratification, status, and inequality in human evolutionary history; the question of race in our species; and the contribution evolutionary theory makes to explaining the origins and the importance of culture in human societies.

Biosocial Becomings

Biosocial Becomings
Author: Tim Ingold
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2013-06-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1107434238

All human life unfolds within a matrix of relations, which are at once social and biological. Yet the study of humanity has long been divided between often incompatible 'social' and 'biological' approaches. Reaching beyond the dualisms of nature and society and of biology and culture, this volume proposes a unique and integrated view of anthropology and the life sciences. Featuring contributions from leading anthropologists, it explores human life as a process of 'becoming' rather than 'being', and demonstrates that humanity is neither given in the nature of our species nor acquired through culture but forged in the process of life itself. Combining wide-ranging theoretical argument with in-depth discussion of material from recent or ongoing field research, the chapters demonstrate how contemporary anthropology can move forward in tandem with groundbreaking discoveries in the biological sciences.

Our Biosocial Brains

Our Biosocial Brains
Author: Michele K. Lewis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2020-07-07
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1498583547

In Our Biosocial Brains, Michele Lewis underscores culture, brain, behavior, and social problems to advocate for a more inclusive cultural neuroscience. Traditional neuroscientists to date have not prioritized studying the impact of power, bias, and injustice on neural processing and the brain’s perception of marginalized humans. Lewis explains current events, historical events, and scientific studies, in Our Biosocial Brains. Readers will be drawn to the relevancy of brain science to examples of injustices and social bias. Lewis also argues that incorporating non-western African-Centered Psychology is vital to diversifying research questions and diversifying interpretations of existing brain science, because African-Centered Psychology is not rooted in racist, classist, and exclusionary hegemonic methods. Lewis argues for attention to marginalized populations, regarding the impact of violence, disrespect, othering, slurs, environmental injustice, health, and general disregard on humans’ brains and behavior. Using hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and original research, the author presents scientific studies that are integrated with sociocultural explanations to foster wider understanding of how our sociocultural world shapes our brains, and how our brains’ responses influence how humans perceive and treat one another.

The Fair Society

The Fair Society
Author: Peter Corning
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2011-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0226116271

We've been told, again and again, that life is unfair. But what if we're wrong simply to resign ourselves to this situation? Drawing on the evidence from our evolutionary history and the emergent science of human nature, this title shows that we have an innate sense of fairness.

A Textbook of Human Psychology

A Textbook of Human Psychology
Author: Hans J. Eysenck
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 940115905X

There are so many good textbooks in the field of this sense the book is more comparable to modern human psychology that anyone producing a new one textbooks of 'harder' sciences such as physics and must have a good excuse, ready to explain his physiology. Theories are considered important, but temerity. Our reason for bringing together the various only theories that are scientific in the sense that they authors who have contributed the chapters of this continuously interact with empirically derived facts. book is a very simple one. Most textbooks are written Theories which seldom make contact with facts (e. g. just for future professional psychologists, i. e. for Jung's theory of archetypes) are generally ignored. students who are going to adopt psychology as their There is one other point about which we would like to be explicit. Textbooks often state different theories life's work, and whose main area of concentration is psychology. These students are, of course, a very im regarding a particular phenomenon, or set of phenom portant group, yet psychology is becoming more and ena, without giving any opinion as to which of these more important to professionals in other fields as well theories might be judged superior to the others.

Biocultural Creatures

Biocultural Creatures
Author: Samantha Frost
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-05-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822374358

In Biocultural Creatures, Samantha Frost brings feminist and political theory together with findings in the life sciences to recuperate the category of the human for politics. Challenging the idea of human exceptionalism as well as other theories of subjectivity that rest on a distinction between biology and culture, Frost proposes that humans are biocultural creatures who quite literally are cultured within the material, social, and symbolic worlds they inhabit. Through discussions about carbon, the functions of cell membranes, the activity of genes and proteins, the work of oxygen, and the passage of time, Frost recasts questions about the nature of matter, identity, and embodiment. In doing so, she elucidates the imbrication of the biological and cultural within the corporeal self. In remapping the relation of humans to their habitats and arriving at the idea that humans are biocultural creatures, Frost provides new theoretical resources for responding to political and environmental crises and for thinking about how to transform the ways we live.

Cognitive Foundations of Natural History

Cognitive Foundations of Natural History
Author: Scott Atran
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 378
Release: 1993-01-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780521438711

Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, this work traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology.

Nature, Culture and Society

Nature, Culture and Society
Author: Gísli Pálsson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2016
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1107085845

Reflecting upon the changing human condition, Palsson addresses various conflated zones of life at particular times and scales. Engaging with topical issues on the public agenda, from personal genomics to human-animal relations to the global environment, the book sets out a compelling case for meaningful change.

Biosocial Criminology

Biosocial Criminology
Author: Anthony Walsh
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2008-11-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135857792

Ideal for use, either as a second text in a standard criminology course, or for a discrete course on biosocial perspectives, this book of original chapters breaks new and important ground for ways today's criminologists need to think more broadly about the crime problem.