Lecture 2. Hence the term biopolitics is construed by the author as embracing various aspects of interactions between biology and politics that represent the main

Hence the term biopolitics is construed by the author as embracing various aspects of interactions between biology and politics that represent the main subject of this book.

Although a special lecture will be devoted to the philosophical underpinnings of biopolitics, a brief excursion into the field of philosophy should make sense at this point. In terms of philosophy, the whole field of biopolitics is founded on the “soft naturalism” principle implying that the human being is a multilevel entity. In other words, human nature includes several different levels. The biological and the cultural levels coexist, compete, and cooperate inside a human individual. Without equating a human being with an animal, biopolitics, nonetheless, demonstrates to people how important the influence of evolutionary factors on their behavior can actually be. Information concerning biological influences on human behavior can help us explain certain human actions driven by a variety of subconscious or unconscious factors and, still more important, resist these influences if they are incompatible with our social norms, moral rules, or cultural traditions. Human males, in principle, are evolutionarily predisposed to commit rape if their social rank is too low to guarantee that females would be happy to make love to them. This biological (biobehavioral) tendency is clearly at variance with our ethical norms and social rules, and biopoliticians expose the danger caused by our evolutionary legacy and develop strategies to resist its influence.

Biopolitics came into being in the late 20^th century as a result of interactions between (i) the life sciences such as ethology (behavioral research), theory of evolution, sociobiology (and, more recently, evolutionary psychology), genetics, neurology, and ecology and (ii) theories in political science based on behavioralism, organicism, and/or synergetics. The progress in biopolitics has also been promoted by recent political phenomena including ethnic conflicts, international terrorism (including bio-terrorism), and the formation of environment-centered and bioethical political movements.

We should now define the fields mentioned above. First of all, ethology originally emphasized observation of animals in their natural habitats. Through direct observation, ethologists seek to identify rules of behavior vital to the survival and reproductive success of the species under study.

Sociobiology developed theoretical models and widely used ethological data in their studies. Generally speaking, sociobiological models were aimed at explaining complex forms of social behavior making good use of concepts borrowed from game theory, decision-making theory as well as economics and other social sciences.

For instance, sociobiologists interpreted the behavior of various biological species in terms of cost-benefit analysis. In a large number of species, females appear to prefer long-term relationships with the same male. In contrast, males tend to change their “girlfriends” frequently. In terms of sociobiology, this is accounted for by the fact that the two partners make unequal investments in their offspring. In the numerous species in which females nurture the young, they invest considerably more resources than males. Therefore, it is only the males who are interested in changing their partners in order to transmit their genes to a maximal number of offspring. Females aim to secure the long-term support of a resource-providing male.

Evolutionary psychology (EP), a field related to sociobiology with respect to methodology and research goals, took shape in the late 80’s. It was defined as the application of adaptational (i.e. evolutionary – O.A.) logic to the architecture of the human mind (Cosmides and Tooby, 1997). Unlike sociobiology, EP only deals with human behavior. It is assumed that human behavior like the human body evolved as an adaptation to the environmental conditions of the Pleistocene period when primitive human beings lived – to the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA). Accordingly, EP is based upon “the principle that the mind is an adapted organ like any other in the service of reproducing our genes under specific environmental conditions” (Nicholson, 1997, p.1053). For example, child-rearing behavior of women took shape, according to evolutionary psychologists, about 200,000 years ago as an adaptation to cope with dangers faced by children. This point on the time scale corresponds to the EEA for child rearing by women.

A couple of important terms related to political science:

Organicism was characteristic of Morley Roberts (1938) seminal book on biopolitics. In this book, the structures of living organisms and political systems were compared.

Behaviorism. A behavioral science developed by J. Watson, B. Skinner, and others in the first half of the 20^th century. An organism was compared to a black box, i.e., an automaton that reacted to a stimulus (S) by displaying a stimulus-induced behavioral response (R): S → R. For instance, a rat locates food, and its salivary glands fill the mouth with saliva.

Behavior al ism. An approach to behavior that, in contrast to behaviorism, assumes that a stimulus can cause different responses, depending on the state of the organism (O) involved. The modified scheme is, therefore, S → O → R. In the example with the rat, a sexually aroused rat male will probably ignore food and produce little saliva if he locates a female. Behavioralism, apart from biological organisms, was applied to social organisms including political bodies.

I hope I needn’t discuss synergetics at length in this group of global studies-majoring students.

The progress in biopolitics has also been promoted by recent political phenomena including ethnic conflicts, international terrorism (including bio-terrorism), and the formation of environment-centered and bioethical political movements.

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