Biosocial Classifications And The emergence and Visibility of "New Societies"
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2011-11-24
Author(s)
Abstract (De)
"New societies form along newly recognized (or, at any rate, newly asserted) biological or genetic lines, forging new alliances and loyalties", wrote Ian Hacking some years ago. But what might the evidence be of these new societies, what "stuff" are they made of? Obviously, the "genetic imperative" has gained reality in medicine and kinship identification. Moreover, there is some kind of a rebound of a biological understanding of society, promising soon to identify genetic markers determining social realities such as criminal behavior or sexual preferences. But this kind of information, if it can ever be reliable at all, contextualizes societies and individuals as they are, delivering information about their biological background and, perhaps, limiting the trust in cultural forces. There would seem to be no reason to call them "new societies". Kinship, for example, has always been a mix of biological and social information.
Is there any argument for introducing a new concept of societies, in view of the use of biosocial classifications? Beside the endless debates on the degree to which the biological determines the social, one can also observe a shift from the "bio-deterministic" to a more probabilistic way of thinking about the biological and the social. In this thinking, biological and social classification are not linked in a casual manner, but conceptualized as interfering spaces of probabilities beside the concrete individual or social group. The most significant shift in this direction can be seen in the attempt to create biosocial surveys. The intention of biosocial surveys is to link databases of classical social surveys with databases consisting of biological information in a probabilistic manner. The purpose of biosocial surveys is obviously not a biological ontology of social or individual living, but a new tool to simulate and control risks, to manage biological and social diversity in a new flexible "biosocial space". The importance of surveys as tools to represent and manipulate modern societies is widely known and shown. Looking into the concepts of this new kind of survey, contextualizing it with the history of statistical thinking and biosocial classification, this paper explores whether these new biosocial survey strategies can indeed be seen as indicating the emergence of "new societies" that individual beings have to live with.
Invited lecture.
Is there any argument for introducing a new concept of societies, in view of the use of biosocial classifications? Beside the endless debates on the degree to which the biological determines the social, one can also observe a shift from the "bio-deterministic" to a more probabilistic way of thinking about the biological and the social. In this thinking, biological and social classification are not linked in a casual manner, but conceptualized as interfering spaces of probabilities beside the concrete individual or social group. The most significant shift in this direction can be seen in the attempt to create biosocial surveys. The intention of biosocial surveys is to link databases of classical social surveys with databases consisting of biological information in a probabilistic manner. The purpose of biosocial surveys is obviously not a biological ontology of social or individual living, but a new tool to simulate and control risks, to manage biological and social diversity in a new flexible "biosocial space". The importance of surveys as tools to represent and manipulate modern societies is widely known and shown. Looking into the concepts of this new kind of survey, contextualizing it with the history of statistical thinking and biosocial classification, this paper explores whether these new biosocial survey strategies can indeed be seen as indicating the emergence of "new societies" that individual beings have to live with.
Invited lecture.
Language
German
Keywords
Biosocial. Knowledge production. Surveys.
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Book title
Data - Difference - Diversity: Technologies of Differentiation in the Life Sciences
Publisher
Max Planck Insitute
Publisher place
Berlin
Event Title
Data – Difference – Diversity: Technologies of Differentiation in the Life Sciences
Event Location
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Event Date
24.-26.11.2011
Subject(s)
Eprints ID
210091