#437 Allan Horwitz: What's Normal? Reconciling Biology and Culture
RECORDED ON DECEMBER 14th 2020.
Dr. Allan Horwitz is Board of Governors Professor in the Department of Sociology and Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. He has also chaired the Mental Health and Medical Sociology Sections of the American Sociological Association, as well as the Psychiatric Sociology Section of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. His research has focused on the sociology of mental health and illness. In 2006, he received the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Sociology of Mental Health. In addition, he has published several books including What’s Normal? Reconciling Biology and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016).
In this episode, we focus on “What’s Nomal?”. We first discuss issues with the discipline of sociology, and the difference between it and anthropology. We talk about the history of the contention between biology and culture. We then run through several examples of social phenomena explored in the book, like incest taboos, first names, cowardice and courage, grief, sexuality and gender, and mental illness. We also ask what is normality, and discuss the concept of evolutionary mismatch, and some examples it applies to, related to human health and human psychology. Dr. Horwitz explains his Harmful Disfunction approach to social phenomena. Toward the end, we talk abut how we can improve scientific disciplines that are either centered on biology or culture.
Time Links:
Intro
Sociology and anthropology
Biology vs. culture
Human universals and cultural variation – the examples of incest taboos and first names
What is normality
Evolutionary mismatch
The Harmful Disfunction approach
Cowardice and courage
Grief
Gender
Mental disorders
How to improve biology-centered and culture-centered scientific disciplines
Follow Dr. Horwitz’s work!
Follow Dr. Horwitz’s work:
Rutgers page: https://bit.ly/2KraOYI
ResearchGate profile: https://bit.ly/37U6hWQ
Amazon page: https://amzn.to/2LzIMuU
What’s Normal: https://amzn.to/3oP1f4P