Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Kyle Harper is the Interim Senior Vice President and Provost at the University of Oklahoma and Professor of Classics and Letters. His first two books were Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425 (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Harvard University Press, 2013). He is currently writing a book on climate change, disease, and the history of the later Roman Empire. In 1960 Philippe Ariès publishedL'enfant et la vie familiale sous l'Ancien Régime, a study that helped launch social history on the study of private life.1 Ariès located a major transformation in the “sentimental climate” of the family in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; the new climate brought greater sensitivity toward childhood as a special stage of life, the expulsion of non-nuclear residents such as servants and lodgers from the domicile, greater solicitude for early development, and more privacy within the family. By associating these characteristics—sentimentality, nuclearity, investment, privacy—with modernity, Ariès gave impetus to the search for the “modern family” in other societies. Probably the most famous contribution in this vein was Lawrence Stone's The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500–1800.2 Stone's model of development, while more complex, still posited a trajectory toward intimacy, companionship, and affection within family relations. This sort of historical work was pioneering both in the subjects it sought to understand and in the sorts of documents it called upon as sources of knowledge about the human past. In concert, the study of gender, the family, and sexuality developed into one of the most prominent and successful subfields of the historical discipline.3 As the study of private life matured, two contradictory tendencies emerged.4 On the one hand, a number of historians emphasized the striking otherness of the past and the profound differences between historical experiences of the family and the present; stunning anecdotes of casual cruelty or arresting examples of past reproductive arrangements underwrote a rhetoric of defamiliarization. On the other hand, an inevitable debunking ensued, as a second generation of researchers set out to find evidence for such things as nuclearity and sentimentality in the premodern family. Inevitably, they did so. The Roman family, for example, proved to be far more nuclear and neo-local than the stereotypes of an all-powerful pater familias ruling over his clan had led us to believe.5 And signs of the sentimental ideal of the family have now been traced to the very earliest Latin literature; in the Roman case, it can go no earlier.6 At the very dawn of classical literature, after all, we are reminded that “the sons of Atreus” were not “the only men who loved their wives” (Iliad 9.340–341). Ultimately, in the telling words of one historian working in this field, “the evidence suggests that the ‘modern sentimental family’ exists as far back in time and as widely in space as there are proper sources to document it.”7 The project of historicizing the sentimental nuclear family, then, wobbles on the weakness of its defining theoretical concepts. This weakness has left one of the richest veins of historical investigation with an extraordinary amount of empirical description, but without a significant number of clear or generalizable conclusions. This juncture is unfortunate, for a number of reasons. The discovery of intense affection or nuclear structure in premodern times hardly dislodges the deeper claim for the radical novelty of the family in the modern period. In short, Ariès and Stone are among those who still have something fundamental to say about the rise to social dominance of a new, bourgeois style of family life. However, terms such as “sentiment” and “affection” could be greatly enriched if they were informed by an account of the physical body and the material dynamics of the genetic and hormonal mechanisms that shape and are shaped by the experience of private life. The historiography of the family is limited by the fact that history and biology have not been mutually engaged in this area of study. In fact, the study of gender, sexuality, and the family represents an area of the field where history deliberately turned away from biology. The study of private life, as it developed in the 1970s and 1980s, became a strategic site of self-definition. The exclusion of biology, it was claimed, was what enabled a history of sex, gender, and the family.8 In consequence, an effective dualism, in which “culture” creates difference against the background of an unchanging “nature,” took hold in the field. This dualism has deep roots, of course, in the primordial division between what Dilthey called Geisteswissenschaft and the Naturwissenschaften, the “two cultures” of the academy.9 But in the crucial phase of disciplinary formation during the 1970s and 1980s, this division took a very specific form, due in part to the sorts of claims that some biologists were then making. Moving toward a reconciliation between history and biology requires an understanding of this highly contingent clash between students of culture and students of nature in recent decades. The history of private life offers a privileged vantage on this disciplinary encounter and its aftermath. In short, “biology” and “culture” as analytical categories need to be historicized and treated as essentially contested terms whose varying definitions carried profound implications for the project of disciplinary formation. Moreover, in the process of drawing disciplinary boundaries, an acerbic rhetoric of “determinism” and “reductionism” would play an integral role in marking the analytical territory of historians and biologists, and driving a wedge between the two approaches to human phenomena. The disciplinary distance that has grown up between “history” and “biology” is unhelpful in both directions. Biologists and biologically oriented social scientists offer rich and diverse ways of thinking about what it might mean to explain human behavior that are far less deterministic than stereotypes drawn from 1970s sociobiology might suggest. At the same time, historians could contribute to a deeper understanding of the contemporary structures of private life—and consequently the experience of contemporary physiology—by conceiving of it as an embodied experience shaped by a physical and cultural environment that is a historical inheritance. Rather than treating the sentimental family as either a construct of modernity or a timeless feature of human experience, we could re-approach the problem by asking how the conditions of modernity activate, perhaps even hyper-activate, biochemical responses whose mechanisms and function are increasingly understood. In a set of essays whose purpose is to stimulate discussion about the conceptual boundaries of history as a discipline, it might be helpful to sketch out how some of the boundaries were drawn in the first place. When historians entered the study of the family in earnest, they trod upon ground long occupied by anthropologists and biologists. In fact, the affective basis of human behavior and the motivational systems underlying pair bonding and parental investment have been of central importance to both anthropology and biology. But as the historiography of the family began to mature, anthropological and biological approaches to human behavior were entering a contentious new era, and historians would be caught in the crossfire of a much broader disciplinary conflict in the human sciences. The exclusion of evolutionary science from the study of human culture was determined by developments in the study of evolution and the study of humanity specific to the 1970s and 1980s. Although the century following Darwin's Descent of Man (1871) saw some attempts to describe human behavior in evolutionary terms, the 1970s saw an explosion of interest in evolutionary explanations of human behavior, most visibly in the form of sociobiology.10 Sociobiology emerged at a particular moment in the history of evolutionary thinking. It derived from a revival of interest in sexual selection and from a new focus on gene-level selection for adaptive traits.11 In short, sociobiology made arguments of the following nature: Behavior X is caused by gene Y because our ancestors faced problem Z. The response sociobiology evoked—from the humanities, from the social sciences, and from evolutionary theorists alike—was swift and severe, a virtually unprecedented sort of interdisciplinary firestorm that would roar for the next two decades and continues to rumble.12 Undoubtedly, sociobiology presented an ambitious, even imperious agenda. Wilson's dream of consilience sounded to some like an annexation, and a turf war instantaneously ensued over who had the disciplinary toolkit to explain human behavior.13 The sociobiology controversy was a crucial episode of disciplinary formation, and it is not circumstantial that the history of the family, gender, and sexuality developed against the background of this dispute. Nature and culture came to acquire very particular meanings in this charged atmosphere. Nature was construed—by proponents and opponents alike—as gene-level adaptationism.14 Sociobiology, for instance, inspired the birth of evolutionary psychology as a conscious effort by social scientists to integrate adaptationist reasoning into the study of psychological traits. However, it seemed to some to be a menacing incursion into the study of human behavior.15 Advocates of evolutionary theory, inspired by sociobiology or evolutionary psychology, were accused of biological determinism, as students of culture developed a standard rhetorical strategy to fend off such unwanted intrusions into their territory.16 In this controversy, as “nature” came to mean one particularly strong brand of evolutionary reasoning, “culture” came to signify the analytical paradigm that had the resources to account for differences across time and space. The existence of human differences became a methodological premise of historical and anthropological thought in the 1970s and 1980s for a number of reasons, but at least in part this emphasis on variety and difference served to combat the assertions of a universal human nature that might be grounded in the genome.17 In other words, constructionism as a methodological stance emerged for a number of internal, epistemological reasons, and it quickly became in about the of biological the family, gender, and sexuality have been at the of cultural constructionism in the of and it was the of evolutionary science to explain these same of human The history of private life was at the very of between biology and the study of sexuality, at a particular moment in the between two approaches to human phenomena. The fact that the history of private life occupied a of disciplinary conflict would be a had not some about the between nature and culture in the working and boundaries of the these us at one the pioneering book The of to find the of the family in the of history and to the of culture over we a in which nature and culture are off from one with fact that is due to that is due to gender, a cultural In this widely nature is some physical but those are and the of human The of a for of between nature and culture to we an of nature and with and his in that in fact a of the in constructionism was as a of change, because were that on biological determinism, then to it would mean to In the then, biological was as the between and biology, and much greater sensitivity about the of an of the implications of biological explanations of human behavior the division between history and biology is by a that is in the of disciplinary In history of the process by which have from nature by and is treated as a phase during which the biological of humanity was limited by It was this after all, that led in off in search of the of in but not has how these sorts of have and what the division of between biology, and history has for the and of In the of family, gender, and sexuality, in historians have privileged and as with to say about the role of which was left in the past. is a and even in the of which the of human history as cultural The early of working in the of the time were who posited a primordial of that to the of that human such as and the was the first of by on contribution in this was an of his time, whose a in the of social He that biology and human were not for example, was both cultural and But the with for the the nature to The of such a historians and anthropologists to nature in the culture began its This hardly to the within But it some of the history of private life, in has been to the of biological It is striking how contingent the formation of the and how particular its of what biology is and how biological reasoning The of biological were to a form of adaptationist But the was In the the two decades in and in evolutionary anthropology and theory, have the of biology and what it might mean for the study of human behavior approaches to human behavior an of work on mechanisms and evolutionary explanations it is to that biological can be at and of explanations are essentially about body and explanations are about the dynamics of and over evolutionary explanations to describe how things explanations they work the they Moreover, of from the physical of to the of across and within with nature at both the and the of are and not has a on a most scientists to gene or function are not with the evolutionary that account for structure and examples can the and of biological At the the of social behavior is a are that as the with the and with the about the body and its The can both gene and that it behavior two of on two have that they to the of an with on its structure and sexual is by the of which in ways with have that they about the or or instance, might or or have and the such as and and such as and both human behavior, and in their and is by behavior, and experience, in of boundaries the study of hormonal on particularly a more and can be But in recent the of of the of and the of have the for the of on and a number of social to the most in evolutionary terms, and the in terms, is the of the up which greater of and its the of which and by the by in the of human have been with The hormonal basis of by is less are In human toward the of a and for a time after the birth of a which behavior or In some parental behavior to be by in and a role for in play a major role in and reproductive behavior, In a central role in It dominance and The of in men are by such behavior, in response to and in response to the of are highly to hormonal Probably the most famous is the of in are This difference can be by the of for the and in in the strong The hormonal of human has been with some In it has been that men with of are less like to men and men in have of than which suggests that can the of The is shaped by an experiences and not by his or study of for instance, that who were as had of as study that to of a but more for who had not parental in their who have have of The study of is to the which experiences such as or shape gene and in work has that the of in part because the experience the function of the As the in this by and the dynamics of and the of in are to be in with for is highly to offers a on human it to how are offers a for asking reasoning about the is grounded in evolutionary theory, but it is far from It is of explanations focus on at the of the such to explain or behavior as an there is psychology to psychological that genetic in evolutionary Sexual for instance, to the problem of focus on but the of of the most for reproductive and parental is evolutionary or human is on two and are to their but adaptive are and developed within anthropology and in with evolutionary evolutionary to the genetic basis of psychological that were to a past environment and be in later adaptive in response to to the diverse field of evolutionary social science might find human emphasis on and off the fact that between and in be between and the even in the of and instance, can focus on the or of body of now the that the of life and the of are to example, the at widely across human to first The of with to resources can of their reproductive while the of the with is not the only It has been that in family experience both and sexual at is that an experience of childhood as a about the social and which the body to toward is of other in the human life in terms of within a example, at first widely across human societies. with at first for because sexual to more and The of is by a number of and The role of is understood. with on The of are by the of the such that the of is in who are in an only the mechanisms of but are to At a of it is the that and of that over such as and parental a strong on in be by parental investment, and of parental investment are during childhood can have on and of or on an psychology and evolutionary in their to explain behavior as adaptive in terms of the But there is controversy over the of selection at work in human after a generation in which the gene was the is a as a of evolutionary This controversy has implications for of human behavior, but the behavior in to what can be by selection and of in culture social which have enabled some to in ways that selection to at the this up is the of and for the of that be to the could be the of evolutionary that are to cultural culture can the of who with other from conceiving of culture as something that and against and the that it within In short, some of the most in the of biology to human both the and the claim that historical the of culture over The of culture and nature as was from the and has less to the of biological science in the study of past The and of in the not have been to from of evidence of the sort that the study of dynamics exists only for the two and only over the or as the essays in this there are a number of ways in which historians can to with biology. if the and the fundamental fact that out of nature into culture us to the of a human history enriched by the of modern biology, and in to the of theoretical and empirical biology by a with a historical the of parental investment and pair bonding is a deep part of the evolutionary there were of family in premodern far into On the other hand, these are not unchanging of but are by It is that the family over time did not toward greater but in response to cultural and conditions as that in response to the of the might a history of the family like that did not set out to describe how the sentimental family emerged from the cultural of modernity, but what historical have and the and hormonal that pair bonding and parental investment over the very long an might in the the experiences of private life have been shaped by the environment and structure of human instance, the rise of as the carried in its radical social new of and new of could have up the human experience of with implications for the affective Moreover, evolutionary are in a historical that the of and the ways in which would shape sexual recent study that in following the of as of became to and reproductive In other words, the rise of conditions in such a that became an reproductive because was a and it the of pair bonding and parental are that need to be made to this the very enabled by to unprecedented of In case, from a historical informed by biology. in the experience of private life have had less to with in the and more with cultural The of as a cultural over the from an evolutionary a the and of this which to its interest as a social that from and classical and then to have caught some historical that led to its now universal are to to our understanding of the biological of such cultural for instance, not have developed for to or but its had on the affective and hormonal of human By among it have had are the Roman was one of the first of and what on human experience it is Moreover, in contemporary hormonal in and Marriage the of in human in societies. This was not to hold in a of where men in fact had the of this could be by the fact that in a not or for or it could be that men with the were the most successful in The of as a cultural to be an of that the dynamics of sexual a of human behavior to the the for the study of much of the on family history is the that play into the The in behavior that led to greater parental investment in of in a profound and transformation in human reproductive and anthropologists have toward the in one of the of this discussion be that the which the for have or in premodern but in a that led to the that the family. The of the which have far and still more from biologists and cultural historians the human body and have been over the two by in and to have a role to play in and social scientists that the human subjects they study are a of and to the radical implications of what that might The was not one of the most profound in the have private what the human or it was at least one of the in the we experience as the life new with biology, decades of not be In the it is most to new which at be in the long social parental investment and its hormonal in premodern the in and of the a of and for parental could the rise of and be a in the history of human that has had on human experience of family are far more than at this but that is what the of biology and history an of sex, gender, and the family have resources to difference across time and space. When that emphasis is as a to biology it is both directions. history as history biology. historians would the and historical of the contemporary bourgeois family, it would a that is By some have to that the study of and subjects is not the same as the study of human subjects as these researchers that culture biology, and they in a that is evolutionary and not to biological as play a role in the study of behavior and by contemporary subjects as the and of an environment that is
Source: The American Historical Review
Author: Kyle Harper
Institution: University of Oklahoma
Language: English
Topic: History of Emotions Research
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2329411361