Louis Proyect wrote: > Jim, ... it ever strikes your > fancy, you might want to check this book. One of the authors referred to it > on my blog and I plan to look at it the first chance I get:
Thanks for this. > Concerning Diamond's sociobiology, please forgive my pointing out that Fred > Errington and I made this argument in our 2004 book, Yali's Question: Sugar, > Culture and History (U. of Chicago Press). Here is a bit of it from the Introduction (p. 11 and p. 263): < Diamond's not a "sociobiologist," at least not as the term is usually used (to refer to E.O. Wilson _et al_). The latter is summed up by Dawkins' idea of explaining absolutely everything possible by reference to the bogus selfish gene. If genetics (or, rather, poor genetics) plays a role in GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL, it's a minor one as far as I can tell. Of course, as usual, my memory may be failing me again. > Diamond’s view of the relentless course of human history, driven by the > operation of ultimate causes over its thirteen-thousand-year span, seems to rest on an implicit view of human nature as aggressive, acquisitive, and selfish... < It's true that his theory is "relentless" in style; that's what I meant by "determinism." However, I don't see anything wrong with a little determinism once and awhile -- as a suggestion for adding a piece to a larger puzzle. Just as Louis Althusser took the deterministic version of Marxism pushed by the French CP at the time and added the role of overdetermination, we should do the same to Diamond. It's also true that in GGS, Diamond left a major assumption implicit, which is poor practice (a practice that's quite common in social science). However, I think that these authors have the nature of the implicit assumption wrong. Instead of it being that "human nature" is "aggressive, acquisitive, and selfish," however, I'd say that it's a larger unit that is presumed to act this way.[*] That is, it's not individual humans that are that way in Diamond's theory (as suggested by the usually-ambiguous phrase "human nature") but instead bands, tribes, communities, and the like that are assumed to be aggressive, acquisitive, and selfish. My understanding is that Diamond sees bands, etc. as being this way because of the ecological/geographic constraints the force them to compete with each other. If they had been unified as part of (and coordinated by) a large centralized organization rather than being competing groups, his theory would not apply. But as far as I can tell, he's right that most of human history involves the (often bloody) competition among groups, sometimes moderated by treaties, federations, larger state and state-like organizations, and the like. (Of course, it can't be _reduced_ to that competition.) There are exceptions, though. Diamond does refer to groups that end up not being quite as aggressive, etc. They usually were living in the hinterlands (isolated by mountains, etc.) until they are conquered by the larger groups. Also, I'd guess that Marshall Sahlins' research on stone age economics, which suggests that bands, etc. did not act that way could be reconciled with Diamond's framework by pointing out that humans hadn't hit ecological constraints the way we humans did later. The same might apply to the First Americans in the first centuries after they crossed the Bering Strait. >... Many of our comments about Diamond might also be applied to the kinds of >explanations sociobiologists offer (and E.O. Wilson, perhaps the most >distinguished of the sociobiologists, writes a most laudatory blurb to >Diamond's book): these are explanations which account for the present and >(although sociobiologists often deny this) the future in terms of fixed and >still active -- ultimate -- causes.< I'd agree that the Diamond and the Sociobiologists (sounds like a rock group) share a deterministic vision and the kind of scientific approach that goes along with it. It's this shared vision that likely provoked the blurbs. But the basic units of analysis are different in the two theories (bands vs. genes). Thus, the association with Wilson shouldn't be used to imply Diamond's guilt. Rather, it tells us to be careful in using his theories (as with any theory). In Diamonds' much-inferior book COLLAPSE, his vision does not seem as deterministic. In fact, it seems pretty muddled. Louis wrote: >it ever strikes your fancy, you might want to check this book. < it's true that I tend to read only those books that strike my "fancy." Work keeps me pretty busy (damn Blue Books!!) so I usually read stuff that's required for research or that's short and sweet. Alas, I'm always in the process of reading five or six books (and I'm a slow reader). I'm currently feeling proud of myself for actually finishing Richard Lewontin's excellent collection of NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS essays. Of course, that pushes me to read the book by Levins and Lewontin which collects their essays from Jim O'Connor's journal.... -- Jim Devine / "If heart-aches were commercials, we'd all be on TV." -- John Prine _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
