The Nature of Society. Sociology and the Life Sciences.

The congress’ subject tackles the naturalistic challenge that is facing sociology from different angles. Developmental biology, neurophysiology and demography refer to a “nature of society” which attempts to place the laws of the social inside a larger framework. For instance, with the formula of the “egoist gene,” developmental biology offers an explanation for social action which undermines the idea of action directed by norms. The debate in neurophysiology about the relationship between the brain and consciousness breaks with the assumption of an actor with free will. Also, the term “population” as used in demographic studies contains assumptions about processes of growth and shrinkage in terms of pure numbers which put pressure on society.

Sociology will not be able to meet these challenges by merely retreating to a supervising position of ideology criticism. The message of this congress should rather be a constructive engagement with the questions the terms “gene,” “brain” and “population” present us with, without falling prey to the reductionism of the respective naturalistic concepts.

The paradigm shift from physical to biological models has informed sociology from the beginning. The sociological gaze does not assume constraints and rigidity as the effects of human nature, but empowerment and an increase in the diversity of society. The answer to the current naturalistic challenge is not the reduction of sociology to a zoology of entities, a physiology of the brain or an arithmetic of the population, but the inclusion of the natural historical heritage, the physical context and the quantitative developments into our theorizing about society. This way, sociology can understand the questions asked by the life sciences as an expression of currently surfacing problems of society.

Excited public debates about the social impact of a shrinking population, about the moral aberrations of liberal eugenics and about irresponsible promises made by cosmetic surgery focus society’s attention on the question of human nature once more. Social advisory boards and ethics commissions attempt, with well-meaning advice, to stem the tide of societal tendencies which seem as if they have gotten out of hand. Against the power of pictures in the media, however, calm consideration cannot argue. On the other hand, biogenetics, neuroscience and robotics are met with great expectations for new markets and a new man; dreams arise of artificial bodies and a live technology leading us into a posthuman world. Lastly, the term “life sciences” offers to institute a hierarchy of scientific disciplines, relegating the humanities and social sciences to an observer position. Major public funds are expended for imagery methods, so that there is not much left for social splits and societal communication. Obviously, the subject of “life” exerts more pull than the subject of “society”.

This congress looks at the forms, functions and effects of this biopolitical turn in public discussion. How do expectations of the possibility of more beautiful, brighter and healthier people connect with fears of a dying population, about the destruction of useless life and the lasting manipulation of the human genome? The subject is the diagnosis of these epoch-making changes of that which was “given naturally” and that which is “communicated socially”. It is not merely a replacement of nature by culture, it is rather the search for a new mix between a culture of nature and a nature of culture.

This is connected to institutionally momentous questions about an increase in responsibility for taking care of one’s own natural endowments: what care does the individual have to shoulder himself for his health? Will one’s physical constitution be a dominant expression of social inequality? Are there limits to society’s responsibility for the medical care of the very old? Behind all his lurks the question where a society is heading which seeks a basis for its hopes and its disillusions in nature.

China is the featured country of the 33^rd congress of the German Sociological Society. The effects of birth control, the way natural disasters are dealt with and the ecological effects of rapid economic growth can be studied on a completely different scale in its case. China is a large-scale societal experiment for the question of how society will approach nature in the future.