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"Love of Shopping" is Not a Gene: Problems with Darwinian Psychology, by Anne Innis
Dagg 2007, Black Rose Books Ltd, 210 pages, ISBN 1551642565
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If crime is genetically determined, did all Nazi Germans have criminal genes?
- If the genetic compulsion for rape is to produce babies, why are so many young boys and girls assaulted?
- Since homosexual behavior is common in hundreds of animal species, why do some assert that it is ˇ§unnaturalˇ¨ in people?
- How can it be generally claimed that males are dominant to females when this is true only in those cases in which the male is the larger?
- Since infanticide is claimed to be a male prerogative in lions, why do lionesses also kill cubs?
- If men, like male chimps, are aggressive because of their 98% DNA similarity, why arenˇ¦t women seen to be as randy as female chimps?
- Are Japanese children really the smartest? Or does the Japanese student motto ˇ§Pass with four hoursˇ¨sleep, fail with fiveˇ¨ say it all?
At the beginning of the 21st century, genes are used to explain almost every aspect of human life, from social inequalities to health, sexuality and criminality. Although few people have studied genetics, our culture is full of casual references to them. The Darwinian, if asked to comment on our evident - love of shopping, ' would declare it to be in our genes. As former hunters and gatherers, they would say, there is no qualitative difference between gathering fruits and shopping for food, clothes, house wares or knickknacks. One can read not only about the "shopping gene," but also about the "reading gene," the "humility gene" and the "coaching gene." Pop science, fostered by Darwinian psychology, run amok.This book is a critique of Darwinian psychology-alias evolutionary psychology, alias sociobiology-the study of the social behavior of animals and people based on evolution. In this provocative work, Anne Innis Dagg, an eminent and outspoken critic of this ideology, first presents an overview of the theory and its popularity both among professionals and lay people, then she examines concepts of social behavior-based on "genes vs. culture"--including: aggression in the form of rape, infanticide, homicide, gang violence and war, and general criminality; homosexuality in both the human and the animal world; and race, IQ and environment. Focusing on the problems present in much Darwinian psychological research-flawed data, faulty analysis, and political motives-this controversial book offers the first comprehensible critique of the most popular scientific theory of the late 20th century: evolutionary psychology. In the end, a new perspective emerges which acknowledges the complexity of life by placing at its center the organism, in its environment, rather than the gene.
ˇ§Love of Shoppingˇ¨ is sure to shake-up preconceived ideas!
A book review on Anneˇ¦s ˇ§Love of shoppingˇ¨ is Not a Gene by Patricia Bow is interesting to read:
'Darwin would have been aghast'
"It must be in my genes." You'll often hear people offer that remark as an explanation for habitual behavior. Perhaps without knowing it, they are recycling Darwinian psychology for domestic use. Popularized over the decades, Darwinian psychology (also known as sociobiology or evolutionary psychology) attempts to explain the way we behave in terms of evolution and genetics.
It pervades popular culture, and that's regrettable, according to UW researcher Anne Innis Dagg. Her new book, Love of Shopping is Not a Gene: Problems with Darwinian Psychology is a comprehensive critique of the theory.
Darwinian psychology is popular, Dagg says, because its message is "music to the ears of the many millions of nonscientific readers delighted to have their (often invalid) stereotypes confirmed" -- stereotypes, for example, of male aggressiveness, or of links between criminality and race. The message can have harmful effects. "When researchers in 1980 declared that girls were less inherently able to do math than boys, a fact later shown to be incorrect, there was a decline in the number of female college students expressing interest in technical courses."
She notes that proponents of Darwinian psychology tend to be politically farther to the right than their opponents, and that their findings "tend to foster a social climate that alienates rather than encourages disadvantaged people."
She states her own theoretical leanings in the introduction: that although we owe much to our genetic inheritance, how we behave is largely driven by culture and individual personality.
Dagg has no quarrel with Darwin himself. But, she says, he would have been aghast at the uneven quality of the research that shores up many of the sociobiological works on offer. "Opponents of Darwinian psychology claim that its practitioners tend to rationalize what they already wish for and/or believe," Dagg says. The resulting studies, she concludes, tend to be rife with illogicality and blinkered interpretations.
Among the problems undermining Darwinian psychology, she cites a habit of ignoring research that contradicts one's hypothesis (for example, in studies of infanticide by male lions); overuse of anecdotes as proof; equating animal behaviour with human behaviour (chimpanzees and humans engaged in war); citing references incorrectly; adopting a moral bias; and "bypassing accepted academic standards".
Anne Innis Dagg has an M.A. in Genetics and a Ph.D. in animal behavior. She is the author of approximately 20 books on wildlife biology, women, feminism, and education including The Camel: Its Ecology, Behavior and Relationship with Man, The Feminine Gaze: A Compendium of Nonfiction Women Authors and Their Books and The 50% Solution: Why Should Women Pay for Men's Culture? She is currently academic director of independent studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.
- posted by Wei-chin Chang |
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