John A
^^^^^^^
CB: Biological anthropology existed before the Sociobiology fad. As far as I know, with respect to humans, Sociobiology didn't add any new ,"deep" insights on the relationships between human behavior and biology that had not already been made or initiated by biological anthropology. Plus sociobiology introduced some falsehoods. Similarly, with Evolutionary Psychology and "Robert Ardreyism" , _African Genesis_.
The falsehoods introduced by SB and EP tend to be pseudo-scientific groundings for bourgeois concepts of human nature, like "selfishness is human nature" or sort of "the rational man ideal of economics is biological tendency in humans" ..." humans maximize rational self-interest in their behavior". Ardrey's thesis is that the distinguishing characteristic of humans is that we are killers. This would be the distinguishing characteristic of bourgeois human culture. Some generic bio anthro does this too, but mainstream bio anthro is not dominated by this type of bourgeois ideological projection. In fact to the contrary, bio anthro and anthro in general tend to confirm a _homo socio_ rather than _homo economicus_ version of human nature and origins. See _Use and Abuses of Biology_ by Marshall Sahlins, for example.
In other words, SB and EP tend to have it upside down. It is not selfishness, but "communism" that is the distinguishing characteristic of humans at their origin as a species. The birth of humanity is rooted in an explosion of social and cooperative activity, the opposite of some new level of selfishness and individualism. Human society is founded on the principle that two heads are better than one, including a living "head" "remembering" what a dead "head" experienced during its lifetime. Culture, the human species-being revolutionary product, is "socialist", not individualist, in substance and essence.
Focus on biological anthropology will provide the acid test for extracting what is worthwhile (if anything) and discarding the bad in SB and EP.