Therefore social scientists see explanations of human

Therefore, social scientists see explanations of human behaviour based on biological determinants as extremely
limited in scope and value. The physiological “human package”—bipedalism, omnivorous diet, language ability, brain
size, capacity for empathy, lack of an estrous cycle (Naiman, 2012)—is more or less constant across cultures, whereas the
range of cultural behaviour and belief is extremely broad. These sometimes radical differences between cultures have to
be accounted for instead by their distinct processes of socialization through which individuals learn how to participate
in their societies. From this point of view, as the anthropologist Margaret Mead put it:
We are forced to conclude that human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and
contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions. The differences between individuals who are members of
different cultures, like the differences between individuals within a culture, are almost entirely to be laid to
differences in conditioning, especially during early childhood, and the form of this conditioning is culturally
determined (Mead, 1935).
Aside from the explanatory problems of biological determinism, it is important to bear in mind the social consequences
of biological determinism, as these ideas have been used to support rigid cultural ideas concerning race, gender,
disabilities, etc. that have their legacy in slavery, racism, gender inequality, eugenics programs, and the sterilization of
“the unfit.” Eugenics , meaning “well born” in ancient Greek, was a social movement that sought to improve the human
“stock” through selective breeding and sterilization. Its founder, Francis Galton (1822-1911) defined eugenics in 1883
as “the study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations,
95 • INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY-2ND CANADIAN EDITION-WILLIAM LITTLE

Figure 3.10. Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles
Darwin, was the founder of eugenics (Image coutesy
of Wikimedia Commons).
either physically or mentally” (Galton quoted in McLaren, 1990). In Canada, eugenics boards were established by the
governments of Alberta and British Columbia to enable the sterilization of the “feeble-minded.” Based on a rigid cultural
concept of what a proper human was, and grounded in the biological determinist framework of evolutionary science,
4725 individuals were proposed for sterilization in Alberta and 2822 of them accepted between 1928 and 1971. The
racial component of the program is evident in the fact that while Indians and Metis made up only 2.5% of the population
of Alberta, they accounted for 25% of the sterilizations. Several hundred individuals were also sterilized in British
Columbia between 1933 and 1979 (McLaren, 1990).
The interesting question that these biological explanations of complex human behaviour raise is: Why are they so
popular? What is it about our culture that makes the biological explanation of behaviours or experiences like sexual
attraction, which we know from personal experience to be extremely complicated and nuanced, so appealing? As micro-
biological technologies like genetic engineering and neuro-pharmaceuticals advance, the very real prospect of altering
the human body at a fundamental level to produce culturally desirable qualities (health, ability, intelligence, beauty, etc.)
becomes possible, and therefore these questions become more urgent.