In the longer reading for today, Shilling draws a clear distinction between social constructionist and “naturalistic” views of the body. The former, which he does not go into detail about in this excerpt, seems to be the more “sociological” understanding of the body — that the body is influenced by social forces, such as race and gender stereotypes, to move, act, and behave in certain ways. The opposite view, that the body is a “pre-social” thing that determines social phenomena like racial and gender hierarchies, earns far more attention from Shilling in this piece. He argues that this naturalistic view emerged in the late 18th century and that it continues to be the preferred explanation for much of the social, political, and economic inequality that exists between groups in society today.
I found the argument he makes mostly convincing. In particular, the historical evidence he offered about the emergence of the notion of two sexes and the violent, uncontrollable sexuality of black people was compelling for me. He suggests that Western society coming to think that sexual and racial inequality is based in biological differences and is, therefore, natural was attached to specific interests of people already in power. In other words, naturalistic explanations for prejudice and inequality did not just coincidentally (and conveniently) emerge, but they were popularized during a period and in certain places when politically powerful white males needed a new justification for their advantaged place in society. For them, the natural body and its urges — not systematic and calculated oppression — was to blame for the inequality that more and more people were beginning to see and protest against in the 18th century.
Most of the evidence he offers is historical, though, and we are left to assume that naturalistic understandings of the way humans behave are still active today. That’s why I really appreciated the second reading from The Atlantic about debunking neuroscientific explanations for racial prejudice. The article refutes recent claims that racism is natural because we can observe a “fight or flight” response activated in the brain when we show people images of individuals from other races. The research highlighted in this article shows that this is actually not a natural response, but is learned in childhood — and, most convincingly, that this “natural bodily response” is almost completely inactive in children and adults who grow up in multiracial settings.
The readings got me thinking about other ways that the naturalistic perspective is still used today to justify differences between other social groups. I recently came across this video from The Telegraph of a former female CIA agent discussing why she thinks women make the best spies.
The woman’s explanation for why women are ideal spies are couched in assumptions about the body and women’s “nature.” Specifically, she claims that women have “the inherent ability to read people” (something that “came naturally” to her and her female colleagues in training) and “having a maternal instinct.” I am not qualified to scientifically determine if an ability to read people or having an instinct to nurture are “natural” (though they very well could be), but what is important is that her argument assumes that these things are not “naturally” occurring for men. While the readings focused on negative attributes of social groups that are attributed to biology, this is a great example of our tendency to also explain the existence of positive attributes to our “natural” selves as well.
Casual explanations like this one are problematic because stating that a person or group is “naturally” inclined to one thing or another — whether negative or positive — draws attention away from the potential for these attributes to be a result of social forces as well or instead. As the readings for today showed, these small, casual instances of claiming that men and women or black people and white people are biologically or “naturally” inclined to a certain type of behavior can build up over time into justifications for major social problems like systematic prejudice and exclusion.
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