From Boundary-Work to Boundary Object: How Biology Left and Re-Entered the Social Sciences. Issue 1 (March 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Meloni, Maurizio
• Is Part Of: Sociological review monograph. Volume 64:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 61
• Page End: 78
• Publication Date: 2016-03
• Subjects: Galton -- Kroeber -- epigenetics -- boundary-work -- boundary object; Sociology; Sociology; Sociology; Periodicals; 301
• DOI: 10.1111/2059-7932.12013
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0081-1769

Abstract

In an archaeological spirit this paper comes back to a founding event in the construction of the twentieth-century episteme, the moment at which the life- and the social sciences parted ways and intense boundary-work was carried out on the biology/society border, with significant benefits for both sides. Galton and Weismann for biology, and Alfred Kroeber for anthropology delimit this founding moment and I argue, expanding on an existing body of historical scholarship, for an implicit convergence of their views. After this excavation, I look at recent developments in the life sciences, which I have named the 'social turn' in biology (Meloni, 2014 ), and in particular at epigenetics with its promise to destabilize the social/biological border. I claim here that today a different account of 'the biological' to that established during the Galton–Kroeber period is emerging. Rather than being used to support a form of boundary-work, biology has become a boundary object that crosses previously erected barriers, allowing different research communities to draw from it.