#437 Allan Horwitz: What's Normal? Reconciling Biology and Culture

The Dissenter

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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 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 about how we can improve scientific disciplines that are either centered on biology or culture.

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