Neurosociology: the nexus between neuroscience and social psychology PDF
Preview Neurosociology: the nexus between neuroscience and social psychology
Neurosociology David D. Franks Neurosociology The Nexus Between Neuroscience and Social Psychology 123 DavidD.Franks DepartmentofSociology VirginiaCommonwealthUniversity 820WestFranklinStreet RichmondVA23284 USA [email protected] ISBN978-1-4419-5530-2 e-ISBN978-1-4419-5531-9 DOI10.1007/978-1-4419-5531-9 SpringerNewYorkDordrechtHeidelbergLondon LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2009943720 ©SpringerScience+BusinessMedia,LLC2010 Allrightsreserved.Thisworkmaynotbetranslatedorcopiedinwholeorinpartwithoutthewritten permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY10013,USA),exceptforbriefexcerptsinconnectionwithreviewsorscholarlyanalysis.Usein connectionwithanyformofinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware, orbysimilarordissimilarmethodologynowknownorhereafterdevelopedisforbidden. Theuseinthispublicationoftradenames,trademarks,servicemarks,andsimilarterms,eveniftheyare notidentifiedassuch,isnottobetakenasanexpressionofopinionastowhetherornottheyaresubject toproprietaryrights. Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) ToAudreyJ.FranksandDanny,ourson,without whosehelpthisbook couldnothavebeenwritten, andtoourdaughters,TisaandJulie Preface As a career sociologist I first became interested in neurosociology around 1987 when a graduate student lent me Michael Gazzaniga’s The Social Brain. If the biological human brain was really social, I thought sociologists and their students should be the first, not the last, to know. As I read on I found little of the clumsy reductionismoftheearlierbiosociologistswhomIhadlearnedtoseeasthearchen- emyofourfield.Clearly,reductionismdoesexistamongmanyneuroscientists.But Ialsofoundsomethingsthatwereverysocialandquiterelevantforsociology.After readingDescarte’sErrorbyAntonioDamasio,Ilearnedhowsometypesofemotion werenecessaryforrationalthought–averyradicalinnovationforthelong-honored “objectiverationalist.”Istartedinsertingsomethingsaboutsplit-brainresearchinto my classes, mispronouncing terms like amygdala and being corrected by my stu- dents.Thatinstructionhelpedmerealizehowmuchweprofessorsneededtocatch up with our students. I also wrote a review of Leslie Brothers’ Fridays Footprint: How Society Shapes the Human Mind. I thought if she could write so well about socialprocessesmaybeIcouldattempttodosomethingsimilarinconnectionwith myfield.ForseveralyearsIfoundherane-mailpartnerwithawonderfulsenseof humor. She even retrieved copies of her book for the use of my graduate students whenIhadassigneditforaseminar.Soon,afterattendinganASAsessiononthe social aspects of the brain, I was lucky enough to gather together the few people workingintheareaofsocialapplicationsofneuroscienceforaspontaneousdinner meeting. It was agreed that the name for our embryonic field would be “neuroso- ciology.” It was also then that I learned that the first person who wrote under this label was Warren TenHoughten who published Science and its Mirror Image with CharlesKaplanasearlyas1973.Warrenalsopublishedanewsbulletindevotedto the brain and the social process. He is clearly the father of this new field. At that timeIwaseditinganannualonthesociologyofemotionandwantedtodevotethe nextvolumetosocialaspectsofthebrainandemotion. In1999,theyearIretiredfromregularteaching,Mind,BrainandSocietycame out which I edited with Thomas Smith. One reviewer who was generally positive aboutthecollectionendedupsayingthatallsociologistsshouldreadthisbook,but thatsadly,theywouldnot.Needlesstosayhewasaccurateenough,butsomeposi- tivesignswerearoundthecorner.OnewasthepublicationofJonathanTurner’sOn theOriginsofHumanEmotionin2000.Otherencouragingsignshadtodowitha vii viii Preface symbolicinteractionist,DavidMaines,whoinvitedmetowriteaboutneuroscience inhisspecialissueoftheJournalofSymbolicInteraction.WhenProfessorMaines followeduponthatandgavemetheopportunitytowriteasectionaboutneuroso- ciology in Ritzer’s 2007, Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology I thought we had “arrived” as an accepted part of sociology. This was confirmed when Stets and Turnerrequestedachapterontheneuroscienceofemotionintheir2006Handbook ontheSociologyofEmotion. IntheSpringof2008ItaughtwhatIbelievedwastheonlycourseinneurosoci- ologyinthiscountry,butIwaswrong.AnneEisenbergatSUNYGeneseohadbeen teachinganeurosociologycoursedevotedtomentaldisorderforseveralyears.One ofthethingswhichattractedmetoteachingthiscoursewasthatneurosciencecould beseenasahubwhichcouldberelatedtosomanydisciplinesoftheliberalarts. Growing up a minister’s son I had never been able to involve myself in many of the ecclesiastical separations – or better said – walls like the one between high church and low church and whether the communion wine actually turned into the blood of Christ. Certainly there were more important things to put one’s mindto! ButIhavelearnedthatinrespecttowalls,academiawasnotthatmuchdifferent. Withinmyowndepartmentthedivisionwasbetweensocialstructuralistsandsocial psychology as if there could not be a cybernetic relation between the two. To me, WinstonChurchilldescribedthesituationwellinoneofhisremarkablesoundbites totheeffectthatinacademia,neverhavesomanyfoughtforsofewoversolittle. Thisbookisanefforttoworktowardbreaking downthewallsbetween sociology andneurosciencetothebenefitofboth. WhilestudyingformyundergraduateandgraduatedegreeIwasexposedtosym- bolicinteractionandattheUniversityofMinnesotaIhadthegoodfortunetostudy withArnoldRoseandGregoryStone.ThereImetagroupofcolleagueswhohave provided me with intellectual stimulation and challenges for all these many years. ButthisdoesnotmeanthatIcouldonlythinkwithintheconfinesofthatperspective, andlateronIespeciallytookissuewiththepostmodernsolipsismandtheextremes of social constructionism that ignored Mead’s insistence on maintaining an epis- temology which had retained the value of possible error. Without this possibility wordscoulddefineanythinginanywayandonenarrativewasasgoodasanother. MyconcernaboutthishasbeeneloquentlyvoicedbyCarlSaganasquotedbythe neuroscientist,Gazzaniga(1985): It’saforebodingIhave–maybeillplaced–ofanAmericainmychildren’sgeneration... whenclutchingourhoroscopes,ourcriticalfunctionsinsteepdecline,unabletodistinguish betweenwhat’strueandwhatfeelsgood,weslide,almostwithoutnoticing,intosuperstition anddarkness.” IfCarlSaganwerealivetodayhemightnotbesoconcernedabouthoroscopes. Hemightbemoreconcernedaboutsomethingscoveredinthisbooklikethefrailty oftheselfthatmakesusdefensiveandpronetoviolenceandtheunconsciousforces that power structures use to blind us into becoming uncritical believers with the sameresultingidiocy. Preface ix This book represents a long path for me, much longer than I, and my editors expected.Hopefully,thisworkwillmakethispathsizablyshorterformyreaders. References Brothers,L.(1997).Friday’sfootprint:Howsocietyshapesthehumanmind.NewYork:Oxford. Damasio,A.(1994).Descartes’error:Emotion,reason,andthehumanbrain.NewYork:Putnam. Gazzaniga,M.(1985).Thesocialbrain.NewYork:BasicBooks. Franks, D. (2007). Mind. In G. Ritzer (Ed.) The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, vol. 6, pp.3055–3056Malden,MA:Blackwellpublishing. Franks,D.andT.S.Smith(1985)SomeConvergencesandDivergencesbetweenNeurosciences andSymbolicInteraction.InD.D.Franks,T.S.Smith(Eds.)Mind,BrainandSociety:Toward aNeurosociologyofEmotion.SocialPerspectivesonEmotion,vol.5,pp.157–182Stanford, CT:JAIPress. TenHoutenW.andC.Kaplin.(1973).Scienceanditsmirrorimage:atheoryofinquiry.NewYork: HarperandRow,Publishers. Turner,J.(2000).Ontheoriginsofhumanemotions:Asociologicalinquiryintotheevolutionof humanaffect.Stanford,CA:StanfordUniversityPress. Turner,J.andJ.Stets(2005).ThesociologyofemotionsNewYork:CambridgeUniversityPress.
The list of books you might like
