The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination by Ursula K. le Guin

Author:Ursula K. le Guin [Guin, Ursula K. Le]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Essays & Correspondence, Essays, History & Criticism, Politics & Social Sciences, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Women's Studies, Women Writers, Reference, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Criticism & Theory
Amazon: B00B1EEYFQ
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2013-01-14T23:00:00+00:00

Division of labor between the sexes:

This phrase means only that in all or most known societies men and women do different kinds of work; but since it is very seldom understood in that strict meaning, it is either ingenuous or disingenuous to use it in this context without acknowledging its usual implications. Unless those implications are specifically denied, the phrase “division of labor between the sexes” is understood by most readers in this society to imply specific kinds of gender-divided work, and so to imply that these are genetically determined: our genes ensure that men hunt, women gather; men fight, women nurse; men go forth, women keep the house; men do art, women do domestic work; men function in the “public sphere,” women in the “private,” and so on.

No anthropologist or person with an anthropological conscience, knowing how differently work is gendered in different societies, could accept these implications. I don’t know what implications, if any, Wilson intended. But as this kind of unstated extension of reductionist statements does real intellectual and social damage, reinforcing prejudices and bolstering bigotries, it behooves a responsible scientist to define his terms more carefully.

As some gendered division of labor exists in every society, I would fully agree with Wilson if he had used a more careful phrasing, such as “some form of gender construction, including gender-specific activities.”

Bonding between parents and children; heightened altruism toward closest kin; suspicion of strangers:

All these behaviors are related, and can be defined as forms of “selfish gene” behavior; I think they have been shown to be as nearly universal among human beings as among other social animals. But in human beings such behavior is uniquely, and universally, expressed in so immense a range of behaviors and social structures, of such immense variety and complexity, that one must ask if this range and complexity, not present in any animal behavior, is not as genetically determined as the tendencies themselves.

If my question is legitimate, then Wilson’s statement is unacceptably reductive. To focus on a type of human behavior shared with other animals, but to omit from the field of vision the unique and universal character of such behavior among humans, is to beg the question of how far genetic determination of behavior may extend. Yet that is a question that no sociobiologist can beg.

Tribalism:

I understand tribalism to mean an extension of the behavior just mentioned: social groups are extended beyond immediate blood kin by identifying nonkin as “socially kin” and strangers as nonstrangers, establishing shared membership in constructs such as clan, moiety, language group, race, nation, religion, and so on.

I can’t imagine what the mechanism would be that made this kind of behavior genetically advantageous, but I think it is as universal among human groups as the behaviors based on actual kinship. If universality of a human behavior pattern means that it is genetically determined, then this type of behavior must have a genetic justification. I think it would be a rather hard one to establish, but I’d like to see a sociobiologist try.

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