Sociology

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The Appalling Appeal of Nature: The Popular Influence of Evolutionary

Psychology as a Problem for Sociology
Stevi Jackson and Amanda Rees
Sociology 2007; 41; 917
DOI: 10.1177/0038038507080445
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Sociology
Copyright 2007
BSA Publications Ltd
Volume 41(5): 917930
DOI: 10.1177/0038038507080445
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi and Singapore

The Appalling Appeal of Nature: The Popular

Influence of Evolutionary Psychology as a Problem
for Sociology

Stevi Jackson
University of York

Amanda Rees
University of York

ABSTRACT

Evolutionary psychology represents a major challenge to sociology, since it claims

to provide an alternative, more objective account of the human condition and of
social problems. It receives widespread media coverage and has a firm hold on the
popular imagination. In comparison, sociological accounts of society and identity
play only a minor role in public debates. We argue that, as public intellectuals, it is
the responsibility of sociologists to contest these impoverished representations of
social life. In order to do so successfully, it is necessary first to examine the popular appeal of evolutionary psychology, which rests on the narrative strategies
employed to link human origins with contemporary social problems, and second,
to take up the challenge of engaging with less reductionist scientific accounts of the
potential biological basis of society.
KEY WORDS

evolutionary psychology / gender / nature / popular science

ecently, sociology has emphasized the fluidity and contingency of self and
identity, the diversity of social practices and relationships, and the uncertainty and unpredictability characteristic of life in a rapidly changing social
landscape. However, out there in the world these sociological stories have little
public purchase; indeed quite the opposite seems to be occurring an appeal to

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a naturalized, fixed, notion of what we are, both as a species and as individuals.

For example, sociologists have, for close on four decades, insisted that gender
and sexuality are socio-cultural rather than natural phenomena. But this has had
little impact, in contrast to the widespread media reporting of new scientific discoveries concerning female and male brains, gay brains and genes as well as the
supposed contemporary consequences of the sexual lives of early hominids. Such
accounts locate gender and sexuality firmly in the realm of the natural sciences
and sideline the social and the cultural as mere modifiers of innate proclivities.
Meanwhile, sociological studies of sexuality proceed as if everyone knows that
sexuality is social or cultural, largely ignoring the naturalistic explanations gaining ground in the public arena.
Evolutionary psychology is the most pervasive of these new naturalistic theories and the broadest in scope. Here gender and sexuality are not only presented
as natural facts, given by our evolutionary heritage, but they occupy centre stage
as the motor of evolution and the basis of all human conduct. The entirety of
human social life is made reducible to the heterosexual, reproductive imperative:
the drive to pass on our genes to the next generation. A corollary of this privileging of heterosexual reproduction is that competition for mates and offspring is
envisaged as the foundation of human social relations. Thus, while its influence
may be of particular relevance for sociologists of sexuality and gender, it has wider
significance for sociology as a whole. It lays claim to the entire subject matter of
our discipline, offering a purportedly more objective account of human sociality.
Although sociologists have produced cogent critiques of evolutionary psychology (e.g. Fuller, 2006), our public response to its claims has been muted
and inadequate. In this arena sociology seems barely to have a public face or
voice. We suggest here that in order to make headway we must first understand why a particular interpretation of evolution has become so pervasive
and, secondly, place that interpretation in its historical and cultural context. In
this article we explore the seductive appeal of the just so stories produced by
evolutionary psychology and consider why sociology has difficulty countering
these powerful narratives of the origins of human nature. We may not have
comparable campfire tales of our own to offer, but we do have analytical tools
at our disposal that could unsettle the assumptions underpinning the origin
myths currently masquerading as scientific fact and demonstrate that alternative perspectives on evolution are available. By pinpointing the rhetorical
strategies that support these constructed narratives and by placing them in the
context of competing scientific versions of the evolution of social life, we show
how sociologists, as public intellectuals, can challenge these populist and deterministic accounts of human nature. We begin by exploring the impact that evolutionary psychology has had on public apprehensions of society and identity.

The Sociological Importance of Origin Myths

In the average bookshop, popular science occupies a great deal more shelf space
than sociology. Here, the bestsellers tend to focus on origins of the universe

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or of the human species. It is the latter that concern us here, for they impinge
directly on sociological concerns: they do not confine themselves to the origins
of the physical characteristics of Homo Sapiens or even to the supposed
behaviour of our Stone-Age ancestors, but offer accounts of what it is to be
human. Much of the lay and scientific interest in evolutionary studies of
behaviour arises from the expectation that their findings contribute to a better
understanding of contemporary human conduct. Thus this form of scientific
research has direct political and social impact, making sociological critique all
the more urgent.
This approach to the study of humanity originated in the sociobiological
revolution of the 1970s, which sparked a serious controversy between the natural and the social sciences (Segerstrale, 2000)1 and eventually led to a proliferation of different disciplines that attempted to apply biology to culture. At the
heart of the new sociobiological synthesis and its offspring was a particular
twist on the traditional interpretation of Darwinian theory.2 While earlier
accounts had focused on the individuals struggle for survival within its immediate environment (acquiring food, avoiding being eaten), sociobiology turned
instead to the struggle between individuals for representation in the next generation. Each individual organism was now assumed to be unconsciously
engaging in strategies to maximize its opportunities to mate and to ensure the
survival of as many of its own offspring as possible.
It is this focus on sex and reproduction that lies at the heart of the tales of
evolutionary psychology, told by scientists and reshaped by the media, packaged for the lay public in pop science, and appropriated as part of the generally
available cultural stock of knowledge. To give one example of media reportage
of such scientific work, an item appeared on BBC news online on 14 August
2006 proclaiming that: A womans sex drive begins to plummet once she is in
a secure relationship. We are told that, among a sample of 530 men and
women, mens desire for sex with their partners remained constant over time,
whereas 60 per cent of women wanted sex often at the beginning of the relationship, under 50 per cent after four years and around 20 per cent after 20
years. Apparently, these were evolved differences. The report continues:
Dr Dietrich Klusmann said: For men, a good reason their sexual motivation to
remain constant would be to guard against being cuckolded by another male. But
women, he said, have evolved to have a high sex drive when they are initially in a
relationship in order to form a pair bond with their partner. But, once this bond is
sealed a womans sexual appetite declines, he added.

Further speculation on the evolutionary functions of such differences follows,

including the suggestion, now increasingly common in this field, that women
might be diverting their sexual interest to other men in order to secure the best
combination of genetic material for their offspring (BBC News online, 2006).
This story, which is fairly typical, offers some clues as to why sociologists
fail to take such accounts seriously. Any sociologist could immediately see the
logical flaws in the argument, would spot the functionalist teleology underpinning it, question the methodology and be able to advance several alternative

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interpretations of the data. We might also point out that scientists reliance on
the commonsense assumption that sex cements the pair-bond, another centrepiece of evolutionary psychology (Diamond, 1997), derives from historically
specific understandings of intimacy (e.g. Seidman, 1991). The BBC report,
unsurprisingly, did not offer any sociological critique, only a comment from
another evolutionary psychologist who found the arguments plausible.
We cannot, however, afford to ignore such accounts simply because we
find them absurd. To do so is to abdicate responsibility in a social climate
where these stories become part of the cultural scenarios that inform everyday
knowledge, interaction and individual self-constructions. Species stories on
how we got this way are readily incorporated into individual narratives on
how I got this way and some writers of popular evolutionary psychology
actively promote such extrapolations. For example in the introduction to Why
is Sex Fun?, Diamond claims that:
[T]his book may help you to understand why your body feels the way it does, and
why your beloved is behaving in the way he or she is. Perhaps, too, if you understand why you feel driven to some self-destructive sexual behaviour, that understanding may help you gain distance from your instincts and to deal more
intelligently with them. (1997: viii)

Diamond here assumes a self-reflexive reader who is nonetheless a product of

his or her instincts. The extent to which such accounts actually inform individuals self-understanding is an interesting sociological problem, but there is a
more pressing problem for sociology here: they offer a reductionist, misleading
means of self-interpretation, which it is our business to contest.
Evolutionary psychology also offers an impoverished view of culture.
Having conceded that culture may be important to human life and part of our
unique species characteristics, some have, following Dawkins (1976), introduced the idea of memes. This concept, elaborated by Susan Blackmore
(1999), treated culture as the sum total of individual units, which resembled
genes: they could be transmitted from one individual to another, they showed
variation, and as a result of that variation, some were transmitted more often
than others. In this sense, cultural development was not just like biological evolution, it was evolution: a situation where memes competed frantically with
each other for space in human brains. This incorporation of culture into an evolutionary framework displaces sociology we have, it seems, become an endangered species. We need to defend our own disciplinary interests and also
challenge the hegemony of a version of evolutionary theory that enables this
appropriation of culture. Indeed the admission that culture plays a part at all
ought to give us an opportunity to advance different versions of social and cultural change. Yet sociologists, with a few exceptions, have been reluctant to
engage with evolutionary theory of any kind in recent years. We have long dismissed the functionalist methodology underpinning 19th-century accounts of
evolutionary progression from one form of social order to the next,3 and rightly
shrink from the eugenicist implications of social Darwinism. However, at a time

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when creationism, as an aspect of religious fundamentalism, is becoming a

political force especially in the USA it seems unwise simply to damn evolutionary theory as a whole. The accounts of evolutionary psychology peddled to
the public at present not only offer an impoverished understanding of culture,
but also of evolutionary theory itself. There are other ways of reading Darwin
and interpreting Darwinism.
Only certain kinds of scientific stories, however, get told, and those that are
told become simplified when they enter into everyday discourse and popular culture. In characterizing evolutionary psychology as narrative we recognize that
any account of the past, biographical, historical or evolutionary is necessarily a
reconstruction since we can only ever apprehend the past from the standpoint of
the present (Mead, 1932). This is not to say that the past is merely a fiction, since
the past also provides the conditions for the emergence of the present (Maines,
2001; Mead, 1932). But whereas historians carefully piece together evidence on
the conditions of emergence of specific consecutive events, providing a carefully
reasoned, if always provisional, representation of the past, evolutionary psychologists make a huge conjectural leap from the present to a reconstructed prehistory. In a society where science has an almost talismanic status, however, such
flaws seem to make little difference to the perceived plausibility of the story.

The Siren Songs of Sexual Selection

How it is that such evolutionary accounts of human nature have been so successful at colonizing the popular imagination? At heart, most share two
assumptions: first, that human behaviour and society are the products of evolutionary pressure, and second, that human cultural evolution has outstripped
biological evolution. In other words, our bodies and instinctive behaviours are
identical to those possessed by our hunter-gatherer ancestors, which causes
problems when these bodies and instincts must operate in post-industrial societies characterized by abundant food and leisure.4 A fundamental disjuncture
exists, they argue, between our instinctive responses and our current situation,
which can create deep unhappiness for individuals faced by conflicting social
and biological expectations, and, more devastatingly, the potential for global
destruction when biologically based drives meet technological innovation.5
Here lies the first source of their attraction: they promise to provide a scientific account of what is wrong with us, both at the species and the individual
level. In a world where many still take scientific to be synonymous with true,
and where most are aware that human ingenuity may well contain the seeds of
our own destruction, this has undoubted appeal. If one cannot blame divine
providence, then it is useful to be able to attribute potential disasters to forces
that are beyond individual control. However, there are several other elements
that account for the seductive appeal of these evolutionary accounts.
In the first place, these accounts follow a particular structure, the narrative
of deep time told as if it were biography, from the beginnings of life on the planet

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to the emergence of one particular primate species, a teleological reading of the

book of life through the lens of human evolution. Ironically enough, given that
the publication of Darwins Origin of Species (1859) is commonly cited as the
moment where the last shreds of the religious veil shrouding humanitys ultimate
insignificance were torn aside, this technique implicitly reassures the reader that
the purpose of evolution was to produce humanity. Additionally, however, as
Hayden White (1978) observed in relation to historical narrative, the telling of
such stories depends on the moralization of reality: since historians cannot
include every detail in accounts of events past, they foreground those elements
of the story that appear particularly significant for their needs. In the case of evolutionary accounts, although authors differ as to which defining human characteristic appeared first (Landau, 1984; Latour and Strum, 1986), the narrative
of human development remains largely the same and performs several functions.
In the first place, the biological evolution of the species is foregrounded the
emergence of binocular vision, of grasping thumbs, of big brains, bipedal walking, and so on. These points are matters of material record, and no one other
than a creationist would wish to argue that human bodies are anything but the
product of evolution but having accepted physiological evolution, one is logically led to the question of behavioural evolution.
Narrative structures also contribute to the appeal of these accounts
through the imposition of simplicity and the adduction of cause and effect.
Cultural complexity and behavioural diversity are sidelined, becoming irrelevant as the universal elements of human development are revealed. At the
same time, this structure enables these accounts of human evolution to become
nearly impregnable to interrogation. As is the case for many other examples of
popular science (Curtis, 1994), these stories tend to be presented in a narrative
form that closely resembles the popular genre of detective fiction. Implicitly,
this use of the narrative coupled with the mystery/whodunnit style makes conclusions much harder to challenge. At the outset, the solution to the problem of
human behaviour is unknown, but having examined a range of potential suspects (including the soggy red-herrings limply proffered by social scientists), the
perpetrator is identified, often through a process of elimination. Since murder
is rarely committed by a multiplicity of miscreants, there is no need for a range
of different motives for, or causes of, human behaviour to be sought: the criminal has been caught and brought to book. For sociologists, this represents an
unacceptably reductionist approach to human diversity: for the audience, it presents a clear-cut explanation for human behaviour that, in its focus on sex and
reproduction, resonates firmly with the special status of sex in Western culture
(Jackson and Scott, 2004).
Analogy and metaphor also contribute to the enduring appeal of these
attempts to naturalize human behaviour and society. These accounts often use
what generations of sociologists have understood as the organic analogy as a
way to make the millennia of deep time meaningful to their audience. Frequently,
metaphors based in individual human lifespan and the nuclear family are used to
emphasize the immediate relevance of the matters under discussion. Persistently,

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the suggestion is made that, as a species, we are on the cusp of adolescence,

poised to step forward into maturity if we can only find the courage and selfknowledge to face and embrace our biological heritage. Abstract notions of
human evolution are rendered immediate by placing them in this familiar and
familial context, at the same time as the audience is implicitly praised for its
willingness to face the pasts consequences and to take adult responsibility for
their behaviour.
In contrast, social scientists are shown to cling desperately to out-moded
and discredited knowledge. For evolutionary psychologists, this is encapsulated
in the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) of behaviour, which places the
theory of the blank slate at the heart of the humanistic interpretation of
human behaviour (Barkow et al., 1992). That this invented model bears little
resemblance to the actual (diverse) explanatory frameworks of social scientists
has not prevented some researchers from blaming it for our inability to prevent
such crimes as rape and domestic abuse. For example:
Police officers, lawyers, teachers, parents, counsellors, convicted rapists, potential
rapists and children are being taught rape prevention measures that will fail
because they are based on fundamentally inaccurate notions about human nature ...
The social science theory of rape is based on empirically erroneous, even mythological ideas about human development, behaviour and psychology. (Thornhill and
Palmer, 2000: xiixiii)

Our unwillingness to embrace our biological past is, allegedly, not just wrong
but dangerous and irresponsible.
Notions of time and progress dominate the portrayal of human identity in
these accounts, and there is a constant, persistent stress on the need to accept
that the past is our present; we cannot understand what is wrong with modernity without understanding how human nature evolved to produce a disjuncture between human biology and human culture. Frequently, these stories about
humanity add extra immediacy to their appeal by emphasizing the future dangers that await if we fail to recognize and deal with our animal past but what
is interesting is the way in which those future shocks vary, depending on the
pressing problems of the present. So, for example, in the post-war years,
Desmond Morris (1967) and Robert Ardrey (1961) emphasized the problem of
aggression and territoriality in ape evolution, pointing to the way in which the
development of distance weapons (arrows, H-bombs) bypassed the evolved
mechanisms that inhibited fatal aggression. By the mid-1990s, Jared Diamond
and others focused on the dangers posed by uninhibited environmental
exploitation, arguing again that technological innovation and cultural evolution had given us the ability dangerously to over-exploit the eco-system.
It might well be suggested that such changes in the identification of humanitys Achilles heel are to be expected, given that the authors are writing for a
general audience, and will naturally choose to focus their attention on publicly
prominent themes, whether these be war or biodiversity. Despite the fact that
the basic mechanism is the same in both cases (that human cultural evolution

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has outflanked biological restraint), it remains ironic that the consequences of

such allegedly fixed weaknesses are changing over time. Even more ironic is
the fact that these changes in the interpretation of the fixed future of the
species and the planet are mirrored in the conflicting interpretations of Darwin
and Darwinism within biological thought itself.
It is in these conflicts that sociologists can find the tools with which to
unpick what appears to be the univocal chorus proclaiming the identification of
biological fixity. Aware as we are of the fragmentary and multiple nature of
human identity and the overwhelming cultural diversity that exists on the
planet, we cannot manufacture our own grand narrative to counter the assertion of human universals. However, we can point to the fact that, popular culture notwithstanding, biologists themselves have fundamental disagreements
both with regard to the way that evolution operates and with respect to the
nature of the selective pressures that might have influenced the origin and development of human identity and society. Science, as the sociology and history of
science has persistently shown over the past four decades, often produces competing versions of truth.

One Man, Many Faces

The interpretation of Darwinism that currently dominates the media, we have
suggested, is a very particular one in which what matters in the evolutionary
game is the number of offspring produced. For the most part, bodies and
behaviours are treated as progressively adapting over the generations in order
to maximize that figure through competition between individuals for access to
both resources and sexual partners. But this is not the only approach to the study
of evolution, since Darwinism encompasses a number of different perspectives,
all of whom insist that they are the true inheritors of Darwins mantle.
In consequence, popular accounts of evolutionary biology tend to gloss
over terms and concepts that are subject to more than one interpretation within
biological philosophy and practice. Take the question of adaptation, for
example, a notion fundamental to evolutionary psychology. An adaptation is
a means through which the individual organism can utilize its environment
more effectively. Thus our eyes are an adaptation that enables us to see the
world around us. The difficulty, however, comes when the concept of adaptation is applied to the understanding of behaviour and bodies. Is everything an
adaptation? Certainly this seems to be the assumption made by many of the
ultra-Darwinists, but their interpretation has been contested by other scientists.
For example, Gould and Lewontin (1979) argued that the problem with sociobiological thinking was its tendency to assume that everything was adaptive.
Instead, they suggested that many elements of animal bodies and activities
might well be spandrels, characteristics that are neither the product of, nor
subject to selection, but the inevitable result of an individuals growth and
development. Another area of debate is the question of whether populations are

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still in the process of evolving. When studying the evolutionary basis of

behaviour, should one assume that an adaptation has reached fixity in a population (i.e. is possessed by every member), or whether selection for a particular
trait is still ongoing? This issue was central to the controversy surrounding the
evolution of infanticide (Rees, 2001), in which each participant was convinced
that their interpretation was Darwinistically correct. There may well be as
many different accounts of what Darwin said as there have historically been
interpretations of what Marx really meant.
Some biologists (Segerstrale, 2000) believe that these differing interpretations are rooted in the political orientation of particular scientists: both
Lewontin and Gould were criticized for allowing their left-wing sympathies to
intrude on what was a supposedly objective debate. This is ironic, since it is
commonly assumed that the importation of biological thought into political
discourse was a right-wing habit, as in the racist implications of 19th-century
theories of social evolution and the Nazi appropriation of Darwinism (Numbers,
1998; Proctor, 1988). We are very familiar with the ways in which evolution and
biology have been adopted and adapted by those on the right of the political
spectrum to justify and naturalize the hierarchies that those on the left wish to
destabilize and reform. What is less well known, however, is the extent to which
they have also been adopted by biologists in support of a reforming agenda. For
example, during and after the First World War, the evolutionary philosophy
underlying German militarism was identified and critiqued by contemporary
American biologists such as Vernon Kellogg and David Starr Jordan. Kelloggs
popular writings made the passionate case that the uncritical adoption of the
idea of a fatal, inevitable struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest
had produced the perfect justification for war. As an alternative, they pointed
to the fact that natural selection was only one source of evolutionary change,6
and that in fact, since war eradicated the best and brightest of a countrys
youth, it was functionally dysgenic. In this sense, one could base an ideology of
peace within Darwinist selection (Mitman, 1992).
Peter Kropotkins work on the importance of mutual assistance for survival,
along with the early work of Herbert Spencer, provided the basis for a research
programme that took cooperation, rather than competition, as the driving force
in the evolution of social life.7 Here, the Darwinian struggle for existence was
fundamentally a contest between the organism and the environment, rather than
between members of the same species for representation in the next generation.
From Kroptkins point of view, the fittest animals were not the strongest, but
those which had acquired the habit of working together to achieve their goals.
Warder Clyde Allees research, in the inter-war years, empirically demonstrated
the value of cooperation. Using invertebrates, he showed that groups of animals,
placed in a hostile environment, survived longer than did isolated individuals.
This, he argued, suggested that even at the sub-social level, individuals benefited
from group living, and suggested that rather than originating in the hierarchical
relationships of the immediate nuclear family, social life could conceivably
be rooted in these proto-cooperative and non-hierarchical impulses. This

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argument contrasted sharply with the alternative model of primate social origins
promoted by Solly Zuckerman in Britain, whose studies of baboons had led him
to insist that sex was the only explanation for sociality (Rees, 2006).
By the 1950s, Allees programme for cooperationist biology was faltering
and the future looked bleak for the biology of the left. The attempt to find
democracys biological base as a counter to the fascist ideologies prevalent during the 1920s and 30s had petered out as communist totalitarianism took hold:
where once biologists had emphasized the need for unity, cooperation and
potential self-sacrifice, now the metaphors of conflict and competition were
treated as central to a healthy democracy and market economy. Once again, the
focus of attention was on the individual, and the struggle to survive in a
Hobbesian battle of each against all. Emphasizing cooperative collaboration
was a threat to the sanctity of the individuals right to liberty and choice, and
veered dangerously close to communism. By the late 1960s, the arguments of
the last defender of cooperation as crucial to social life had been publicly
demolished (Williams, 1966; Wynne-Edwards, 1962). Selection took place, not
at the level of the group, but at the level of the gene.
One could treat this focus on cooperation as error, rectified by the selfcorrecting nature of science. However, biologists have continued to debate the
nature of the relationship between conflict and cooperation in evolution, and these
debates have become more prominent since the Cold War ended. These
researchers have derived their inspiration from a combination of the work of
Kropotkin and Darwin and in particular, Darwins assertion that an increase in
the number of well-endowed men and advancement in the standard of morality
will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another (1871, quoted
in Chapman and Sussman, 2004: 7). In other words, although self-sacrifice on the
part of an individual will damage that individual, a society of cooperative selfsacrificers will, on the whole, be far more successful than would one of selfish
competitors (Chapman and Sussman, 2004; Sober and Wilson, 1998).
Taking a slightly different tack, Marc Bekoff has shown that, rather than
arising from selfish self-interest (Ridley, 2001), the notions of morality and
justice may have independent evolutionary origins. Most social animals learn
adult behaviour through social play, and such play fundamental to successful
maturation requires honest dealing between individuals. At the most basic
level, two animals playing together need to agree that this is play, rather than
an attempt to mate with, fight or eat the other. As a result, a bigger individual
cannot play with a smaller animal without voluntarily and consistently handicapping herself in some way, nor can a subordinate animal take advantage of a
dominants exposure of belly and throat to bite. Those machiavellian individuals who do break the rules soon find themselves excluded from this valuable
and clearly enjoyable activity (Bekoff, 2004). In the absence of play, social development is inhibited: willingness and ability to play fair is therefore at a premium. On this interpretation, morality and cooperation emerge as desirable
factors subject to selective pressure in their own right. Evolutionary accounts
such as these, in their emphasis on cooperation and interaction, decentre sexual

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selection and can make space for a more complex and diverse story to be told.
They are thus very different from the pseudo-left accounts, such as that of Singer
(1999), which, as Fuller (2006) points out, retain sexual selection at their core.

Conclusion
Nothing in this article should be taken as a criticism of evolutionary biology per
se: it is not our business to make such judgements, especially since feminist evolutionary biologists such as Patricia Gowaty (1997) and Sarah Hrdy (2000) are
already paying close attention to the impact of assumptions concerning sex,
gender and sexuality within their discipline. Our concern is with the unchallenged public circulation of simplified evolutionary accounts of human nature,
accounts that are accepted as accurate simply because they are scientific, and
which make the sheer, staggering, and utterly glorious diversity of human
beings as individuals and as societies impossible to apprehend. We must demonstrate that sociology gives us far more purchase on this diversity than the mechanistic notion of memes, and that our discipline cannot be reduced to an equally
mechanistic standard model (SSSM).
We are failing the public if we fail to engage with these accounts. And on
this reading, engagement does not mean rejection, but an effort to understand
what kind of story is being told and its position within the history of biological
thought. Sociologists, after all, are experts in dealing with internal disciplinary
disagreements: we should not be surprised to find them in the biological sciences, and nor should we refrain from seeking out debate and dialogue with scientists who have stories to tell that do not follow the dominant theme of
competition. If we are to mount a credible challenge to the myth of the SSSM
we should also recognize that evolutionary thought is not a monolithic entity.
We genuinely do not know whether human behaviour and culture are the
products of evolutionary selective pressure, although we find it unlikely. But it
is crucial to distinguish between those popular accounts that insist on the fixity
of human identity and human nature, and those that are, more modestly, and
more hopefully, attempting to identify the biological limits to human capacity
in order that they may be surmounted. After all, as Katherine Hepburn said to
Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen: Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were
put in this world to overcome.

Notes
1

2
3

Although attempts to explain human behaviour by reference to humanitys

evolved past were in popular circulation for many years before this. See, for
example, Ardrey (1961), Sahlins (1977).
See Bowler (2003) for a history of evolutionary thought prior to Darwin.
Of course neofunctionalism does continue to have some influence.

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This is another example of the use of the past to explain the present: we are
adapted, as a species, to gorge on sugar and fat whenever possible. That
instinct, essential for survival in harsh environment, is producing todays obesity epidemic, since its hard to avoid sugar and fat in a post-industrial society.
So, for example, the conflict between the demands of the labour market and the
demands of childbearing; alternatively, the vastly increased risk of global
destruction when wars are fought at a distance.
The other sources included geographical isolation, mutation theory and
Mendelism. In addition, many characteristics separating species were not considered to be adaptive and therefore were not the product of natural selection.
The problem with German theory for American biologists was that it ignored
these issues and privileged natural selection (Mitman, 1992).
Chicago in the early 20th century also saw another progressive and sociological appropriation of Darwin: that of G.H. Mead. For Mead, Darwin provided
a means of countering the individualistic assumption that the individual existed
prior to the social and also static conceptions of human nature and social
organization. Mead saw evolution as a process that continues socially through
the development of a universe of discourse through communication and participation in common activities (1956: 36).

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The appalling appeal of nature

Jackson & Rees

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Sociology Volume 41

Number 5

October 2007

Stevi Jackson
Is Professor of Womens Studies and Director of the Centre for Womens Studies at the
University of York, UK. Her main research interests are feminist theory and sexuality. She
has published widely in these fields and is the author of a number of books including
Heterosexuality in Question (Sage, 1999) and is currently completing Theorizing Sexuality,
with Sue Scott (Open University Press, forthcoming).
Address: Centre for Womens Studies, University of York, Heslington,
York YO10 5DD, UK.
E-mail: sfj3@york.ac.uk

Amanda Rees
Is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology, University of York, UK. Her interests lie in
the history of the behavioural and animal sciences, the public understanding of science
and popular science, the history of science fiction and the sociology of the human/
animal relationships. She is in the final stages of completing a monograph, Infanticide and
Field Science, which analyses the ongoing controversy surrounding infanticide in nonhuman primates.
Address: Department of Sociology, University of York, Heslington,York YO10 5DD, UK.
E-mail: ar24@york.ac.uk

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