Synopses & Reviews
Evolutionary psychology claims to be the authoritative science of "human nature." Its chief architects, including Stephen Pinker and David Buss, have managed to reach well beyond the ivory tower to win large audiences and influence public discourse. But do the answers that evolutionary psychologists provide about language, sex, and social relations add up? Susan McKinnon thinks not.
Far from being an account of evolution and social relations that has historical and cross-cultural validity, evolutionary psychology is a stunning example of a "science" that twists evolutionary genetics into a myth of human origins. As McKinnon shows, that myth is shaped by neo-liberal economic values and relies on ethnocentric understandings of sex, gender, kinship, and social relations. She also explores the implications for public policy of the moral tales that are told by evolutionary psychologists in the guise of "scientific" inquiry.
Drawing widely from the anthropological record, Neo-liberal Genetics offers a sustained and accessible critique of the myths of human nature fabricated by evolutionary psychologists.
Review
"Interesting insight."--American Ethnologist Henry Harpending
Review
"Written with clarity and vigor, but not so much passion that it can be dismissed as partisan political correctness."--SavageMinds.org American Ethnologist
Review
"Written with clarity and vigor, but not so much passion that it can be dismissed as partisan political correctness."--SavageMinds.org --Henry Harpending - American Ethnologist
Review
"Interesting insight."--American Ethnologist
About the Author
Susan McKinnon is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia. She is the author of From a Shattered Sun: Hierarchy, Gender, and Alliance in the Tanimbar Islands and coeditor of Complexities: Beyond Nature and Nurture, published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
Contrasting Theories of the MindThe Calculus of Genetics and GenderThe Science and Politics of NaturalizationThe Cold Hard Facts of Science II. Mind and Culture
Natural Selection as Puppeteer, Policy Maker, and ProgrammerNatural Selection's "Shameless Ploy"Mind and Mechanism and ModuleFixed Architecture vs. Neural PlasticityShady Accounting GenesThe Rationality of Absolutely EverythingThe Choice That Is Not a ChoiceThe Individual That Is Not an IndividualThe Culture That Is Not Culture III. Individual and Society
Genetic Individualism and the Problem of the "Social"The Poverty of the Genetic CalculusThe Poverty of Individual Self-InterestThe Futures in Cloning IV. Sex and Gender
Tracking the ResourcesThe Oxymoronic "Male Sexual Mind"The Cultural Values of PromiscuityUnwiring the "Madonna-whore Switch"Like a Lion and its Kill: Proprietariness and its DiscontentsFrom "Core Mindset" to Cultural Meaning V. Science and Fiction
Organic and Cross Species AnalogiesThe Fabrication of Cross-cultural Deep StructuresEvolutionary and Genetic History: The Cartoon Version VI. Science and Morality AcknowledgementsBibliography