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Biosociological theories integrate biology into sociological explanations of human behavior. They do so by incorporating theoretical ideas and empirical discoveries from various branches of behavioral biology including evolutionary biology (especially sociobiology and behavioral ecology), ecology, ethology, neurobiology, endocrinology, primatology, and population genetics. Biosociological theories inform and guide the work of many contemporary evolutionary sociologists. Most biosociological theories can be grouped loosely into three categories: those that focus on: (1) the biological basis of evolved human nature, (2) the relationship between human nature and the evolutionary history of human societies, and (3) how an evolved ”small-group ape experiences and copes with life at the scale of industrial and post-industrial societal formations.
Recently, biosociological theorists have expressed increasing dissatisfaction with the tabula rasa (”blank slate”) view of human nature. Like an increasing number of evolutionary psychologists, biosociological theorists have begun to subscribe to a new understanding of the human brain as densely populated by a rich array of cognitive algorithms, or innate mental mechanisms, that help generate complex patterns of social behavior. These cognitive algorithms are regarded as evolved adaptations to the selection pressures that were present in the ancestral environments in which humans evolved.
Biosociological theorists like Jonathan Turner and Alexandra Maryanski (2008) have reconstructed the phylogeny (evolutionary history) of human societies to explain how early hominids (primates ancestral to humans) evolved from living in fluid, transient groups with weak social ties to much more stable, durable groups with strong social ties. Their analysis attributes this transition to ecological changes that displaced early hominids from the security of arboreal environments into much more hazardous savannah environments. These new, open-plains environments subjected ancestral hominids to intensified selection pressures that eventually yielded much more highly organized and cohesive societies. The ability of early humans to overcome an ape heritage consisting of weak social ties and transient social relationships was made possible, in large part, by the evolutionary enhancement of human emotional capabilities.
Other biosociological theorists like Douglas Massey (2005) contend that humans are, by nature, a small-group ape that is best adapted to social life at the scale of small, hunter-gatherer bands. However, the past 10,000 years of evolution has produced societies with very large and densely concentrated populations and unprecedented degrees of organizational complexity. Thus, Massey describes contemporary humans as ”strangers in a strange land, occupants of societies that are alien to the evolved psychological attributes of a small-group ape. Some biosociological theorists like Massey observe that humans living in large-scale, urban-industrial societies routinely organize themselves into social networks resembling those that typify smaller, pre-industrial societies. For example, the long-documented tendency of big-city residents to organize themselves into small-scale ”urban villages, often constructed along ethnic-group lines, is construed as evidence of the persistence of a human preference for living in social networks at the scale of the hunter-gatherer band. Yet, while approximating a ”tribal scale” social existence, such social networks do not always succeed in buffering humans from evolutionarily novel threats posed by contemporary societies. Various features of urban environments are seen as subjecting humans to unprecedented stresses, the effects of which can pose serious health threats to an organism arguably better adapted to ancestral patterns of societal organization.
Bibliography:
- Massey, D. S. (2005) Strangers in a Strange Land: Humans in an Urbanizing World. W. W. Norton, New York.
- Turner, J. H. & Maryanski, A. (2008) On the Origin of Societies by Natural Selection. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO.
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