Due to venomous nature of his post, I shall not apologize for ignoring Carrol who seems only on the look out for the controversial half sentence that will allow him to satisfy his penchant for indignant condemnation of his opponents. But how are things working out with the personal trainer?
Of course I have nothing to add to the reflections of Ehrenreich (trained as a biologist, right?) and Pollitt.
Hope to read carefully Allison Jolly's Lucy's Legacy and Natalie Angier's Women (which seems from excerpts to be a most deliciously written book).
Just a few questions for Katha:
(for instance, in her Nation article,
>Barbara suggested that maybe there is a biological basis to racism --
>fear of difference etc.
If I remember correctly she draws here from Lawrence Hirschfeld who attempts to ground race thinking in the hardwiring of our brains to think/classify in terms of natural kinds or essence based groups. Pretty darn skeptical of the study (why should the race consciousness of very young children so surprise us that we turn to the brain's hardwiring when the 'environment' is so suffused with race?). At any rate, I would have to know a lot more about the modular theory of the mind that undergirds Hirschfeld's argument. And I don't think Ehrenreich and McClintock even really suggest the outline of, much less defend, Hirschfeld's thesis. My sense was that they mention it more to show that sociobiology need not be racist since EO Wilson was shown to be all wet.
. About sex/gender, She takes the view of Natalie Angier in her
>new book Woman-- which is that there's an interplay between biology and
>culture, and that female biology has been presented up until now through
>a sexist lens that ignores its strengths and exaggerates its differences
>from men--when those differences are perceived to disfavor women. In
>the Time article, Barbara does not say that sex differences don't exist,
>are trivial, are unworthy of study, or would play NO role in a just
>society. She does not say that sexual dimorphism is a cultural
>construct.She says our society has a faulty ,sexist understanding of it,
>and uses humanity's similarity to other animals to skewer sexist biology
Not necessarily unreasonable indeed (what does she think of Allison Jolly's new book on primate behavior? if either you or kelley could get her to sign up to this list, that would be great).
>-- as when she points out that in predatory species BOTH sexes hunt, so
>the Man the Hunter idea is obviously wrong.
Yet in *human foraging societies* there *seems* to have been an apparent iron law which universally prohibited women from hunting on a regular basis, from having gender-specific weapons and equipment for hunting, and a further total prohibition against the pursuit of large and dangerous game (lit review in Tim Megarry Society in Prehistory: The Origins of Human Culture, p. 307). Engels seems to have understood foraging societies in such terms of a sexual division of labor. Is this accurate? Was Engels wrong to see this sexual division of labor as neutral; or did it really serve as as the basis for sexual asymmetry?
Just thought I would ask.
Yours, Rakesh