Harris Kathleen Mullan, McDade Thomas W
University of North Carolina, 206 W. Franklin St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516-3997, ,
Northwestern University, 1810 Hinman Avenue, Evanston, IL 60208, /467-4304,
RSF. 2018 Apr;4(4):2-26. doi: 10.7758/RSF.2018.4.4.01.
Social and biological phenomena are widely recognized as determinants of human development, health, and socioeconomic attainments across the life course, but our understanding of the underlying pathways and processes remains limited. To address this gap, we define the "biosocial approach" as one that conceptualizes the biological and social as mutually constituting, and that draws on models and methods from the biomedical and social/behavioral sciences. By bringing biology into the social sciences, we can illuminate mechanisms through which socioeconomic, psychosocial, and other contextual factors shape human development and health. Human biology is a social biology, and biological measures can therefore identify aspects of social contexts that are harmful, as well as beneficial, with respect to well-being. By bringing social science concepts and study designs to biology and biomedicine, we encourage an epistemological shift that foregrounds social/contextual factors as important determinants of human biology and health. The biosocial approach also underscores the importance of the life course, as assessments of both biological and social features throughout human development over time, and across generations, are needed to achieve a full understanding of social and physical well-being. We conclude with a brief review of the papers in the volume, which showcase the value of a biosocial approach to understanding the pathways linking social stratification, biology, and health across the life course.
社会和生物现象被广泛认为是贯穿人生历程的人类发展、健康和社会经济成就的决定因素，但我们对其潜在途径和过程的理解仍然有限。为了弥补这一差距，我们将“生物社会方法”定义为一种将生物和社会概念化为相互构成的方法，并借鉴生物医学和社会/行为科学的模型和方法。通过将生物学引入社会科学，我们可以阐明社会经济、心理社会和其他背景因素影响人类发展和健康的机制。人类生物学是一种社会生物学，因此生物学测量可以识别社会环境中对幸福有害和有益的方面。通过将社会科学概念和研究设计引入生物学和生物医学，我们鼓励一种认识论的转变，即将社会/背景因素作为人类生物学和健康的重要决定因素置于突出位置。生物社会方法还强调了人生历程的重要性，因为需要评估人类整个发展过程中以及几代人之间的生物和社会特征，才能全面理解社会和身体健康。我们最后简要回顾了本卷中的论文，这些论文展示了生物社会方法在理解贯穿人生历程的社会分层、生物学和健康之间联系的途径方面的价值。
