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  • The Linking of Sociology and Biology
  • Guang Guo

Why Biology?

In the academic world, sociology and biology have long been separate sciences. The benefits of combining the two seem few.

Biological influences are potentially important to certain areas of sociological inquiry – especially areas that involve individual attributes, traits and behaviors such as delinquency and crime, educational attainment and social stratification. These influences, however, are rarely considered explicitly. One of the implicit assumptions in sociological inquiry is that individuals are the same at birth; the differences among them are then attributed to the position each occupies in a social hierarchy. At least two factors contribute to the absence of explicit discussion on biological influences: (1) our discipline's key theoretical emphasis on a group's social-structural position and (2) the unavailability of reliable measures of relevant biological influences. Both can be illustrated by the development of sociological theories of delinquency and crime.

One dominant sociological theory of delinquency and crime is the theory of social control (Durkheim 1897, Hirschi 1969, Sampson and Laub 1993) which emphasizes the social bond between an individual and society and suggests that a crime is more likely to be committed when the bond is weakened or broken. Gottfredson and Hirschi later (1990) expressed a keen awareness that individuals differ in propensity for delinquency and crime. The researchers considered crime-prone individuals to lack self-control and to be impulsive, insensitive, physical and risk-taking.

The propensity has proved difficult to measure. Gottfredson and Hirschi suggested a number of indicators of the crime-prone propensity: the urge to gratify desires immediately, lack of diligence and persistence in a course of action, lack of commitment to job, marriage, and children, lack of skills and planning, and the tendency to drink excessively, use illegal drugs, and gamble. While these individual characteristics are, indeed, correlated with delinquency and crime, they are the manifestations of the propensity rather than the propensity itself and may, in fact, have their beginnings in biological rather than social differences. However, in the 1980s, measuring criminal propensity at the molecular genetic level was hardly thinkable.

Two developments, one recent and one historical, suggest that the fields of sociology and biology would benefit from the linking of the two fields. The first is the spectacular advance in molecular genetics and molecular biology over the past three decades. Second, relative to earlier societies, genetic influences are becoming more prominent in modern industrial societies. I will return to the first development after describing my argument for the second development.

Viewed in Lenski's (2005) lens, the long history of human society can be divided into four distinct stages: the hunter-gatherer society, horticultural society, agrarian society and industrial society. I believe that the level of genetic influences has a U shape across the four historical stages (Figure 1) for some sociological [End Page 145] outcomes (e.g., status attainment), starting high in the HG society, reaching the bottom in the agrarian society, and becoming more important in the industrial, especially the contemporary industrial democratic society. In a hunter-gatherer society, the level of technology was minimal and the social structure was much simpler and more flexible. Genetic endowment likely played a prominent role in determining an individual's social status.


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Figure 1.

Genetic Influences more Prominent in Current Developed Societies

The most rigid social hierarchies were probably formed in agrarian societies. In the extreme case of the Indian caste system, an individual's occupational and marital prospects were often fixed at birth. In a contemporary developed society, genetic influences are growing more important again. This is not to deny the enormous importance of social forces in contemporary industrial societies. Social forces are important in any society, but genetic influences are becoming relatively more prominent as a society become more egalitarian in terms of opportunities.

Recent advances in molecular genetics have created opportunities and challenges for both sociology and biology. For sociology, it is beginning to be possible to measure genetic differences across individuals relevant to sociological inquiry. Animal studies are already engaged in a comprehensive understanding of the molecular basis of social life (see review by Robinson et al. 2005). Research...

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