Hendrickx Kim, Van Hoyweghen Ine
Life Sciences & Society Lab, Centre for Sociological Research (CeSO), KU Leuven, Belgium.
Health (London). 2020 Mar;24(2):203-219. doi: 10.1177/1363459318800149. Epub 2018 Sep 16.
What is sustaining the divide between nature and nurture, even though sciences like epigenetics have been challenging it for at least two decades? Evelyn Fox Keller asked this question and considered it a logical problem rooted in terminological confusion within the sciences. In this article, we propose a complementary diagnosis of the problem: the nature-nurture divide is (re-)mobilized when society faces questions of inclusion and solidarity. With examples stemming from the fields of insurance and health care, immigration policy and epigenetics, we demonstrate how the nature-nurture divide is performed through techniques of classification for a politics of solidarity. We identify a common to these different examples that we coin 'biopolitical imputation'. We use this term to draw attention to how (Western) societal institutions, including science, create solvable problems out of complex situations, defining human actors and their agency along the lines of the nature-nurture divide as a guide. We argue that the tenacity of the nature-nurture divide is therefore not only a logical problem needing better scientific concepts, but also a cosmopolitical problem asking for a more profound reflection on the ontology and ethics of solidarity in order to move beyond the biopolitics of nature versus nurture.
尽管表观遗传学等学科至少在二十年来一直在挑战自然与 nurture 之间的划分,但是什么维持了这种划分呢?伊夫林·福克斯·凯勒提出了这个问题,并认为这是一个源于科学内部术语混乱的逻辑问题。在本文中,我们对该问题提出了一种补充性诊断:当社会面临包容和团结问题时,自然与 nurture 的划分就会被(重新)调动起来。通过保险和医疗保健、移民政策以及表观遗传学等领域的例子,我们展示了自然与 nurture 的划分是如何通过团结政治的分类技术来呈现的。我们识别出这些不同例子中的一个共同点,我们将其称为“生物政治归因”。我们使用这个术语来提请注意包括科学在内的(西方)社会制度是如何从复杂情况中制造出可解决的问题,将人类行为者及其能动性按照自然与 nurture 的划分进行界定,以此作为一种指导。我们认为,自然与 nurture 划分的顽固性因此不仅是一个需要更完善科学概念的逻辑问题,也是一个世界政治问题,要求对团结的本体论和伦理进行更深刻的反思,以便超越自然与 nurture 的生物政治。