Nature/Nurture, the Body and the Sociology of Child Abuse
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"Dumb questions - blustering hostility"1: Nature/nurture, the body and the sociology of child abuse. P J rennan Master of Arts (Honours) Sociology 2001 )niversity of Western Sydney - Macarthur 1 (Kirby, 1997: 1) Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge Mary Hawkins, my supervisor, for her patience, assistance, guidance, good humour and personal support. I would also like to acknowledge and express my appreciation for the assistance of the following people, in reverse chronological order: Jan Mason, Gaynor MacDonald, Steve D’Alton. I would also like to acknowledge my wife, Amanda, for her intellectual support, her patience and love. This thesis is for my children, Niamh and Declan. Amo sine die. Summary This thesis critiques the nature/nature debate in sociology and applies current thinking to sociological work on child abuse. By examining the literature available within sociology, biology and ecology, the nature/nurture debate is shown to be a defining epistemological construct within sociology. The debate frames both the classical theories of Marx and Durkheim, and contemporary sociological research on the body, such as that by Foucault. In deconstructing the debate, this thesis shows that addressing biology within sociology does not require an acceptance of determinism and that a plurality of possibilities still exists. It also reveals that human corporeality is viscerally susceptible to the environment and that separating human social life from its corporeality merely reiterates the Judeo-Christian theology that human life is divinely separate from its environment. This work is contextualised in the debate on defining notions of childhood and child abuse, thus revealing the operation of underlying discourses which both depend on notions of human nature, and which operate to marginalise children by postulating the 'adult' as a clearly formed and deserving category of sociological interest. In applying contemporary and classical sociology to the issue of child abuse, this thesis destabilises contemporary notions of the plasticity of the body and the irrelevance of the biological sciences to human social life. Certificate of Submission This thesis is submitted in satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Honours) Sociology, University of Western Sydney - Macarthur. It has not been submitted for a higher degree at any other institution. Signed: Patrick J Brennan 4 April 2004 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 3 1 THIS IS NOT SOCIOLOGY - THE OCCLUSION OF BIOLOGY................................... 13 1.1 SOCIOLOGY AND BIOLOGY - A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP.................................................. 14 1.2 'MAN'S' POSITION IN RELATION TO NATURE..................................................................... 18 1.3 DARWIN PLACED US SQUARELY BACK IN NATURE. ........................................................... 20 1.4 ARGUMENTS THAT WE ARE PART OF NATURE................................................................... 20 1.5 DARWIN, EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL DARWINISM.............................................................. 22 1.6 ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY, DEEP ECOLOGY AND DEEP BIOETHICS. ........................... 23 1.7 SOCIOLOGY, BIOLOGY AND EQUALITY............................................................................. 30 1.8 FEMINISM....................................................................................................................... 31 1.9 BIOLOGY AS OPPRESSION ................................................................................................ 32 1.10 BIOLOGY AND SOCIOBIOLOGY ........................................................................................ 34 1.11 CRITICISM OF BIOLOGICAL AND GENETIC DETERMINISM................................................... 36 1.12 NURTURE OR NATURE?: A FALSE DICHOTOMY ................................................................ 37 1.13 "WE SHOULD NOT BE AFRAID OF BIOLOGY…" ................................................................ 41 2 A BRIEF HISTORY OF VIEWS OF CHILDREN AND CHILDHOOD........................... 47 2.1 ANCIENT ........................................................................................................................ 54 2.2 MEDIEVAL...................................................................................................................... 56 2.3 EARLY MODERN............................................................................................................. 58 2.4 MODERN ........................................................................................................................ 61 2.5 MARX, DURKHEIM AND CHILDREN.................................................................................. 74 3 MARX, DURKHEIM, FOUCAULT – HUMAN NATURE ................................................ 75 3.1 MARX - 'THE FIRST PREMISE OF ALL HUMAN HISTORY".................................................... 76 3.2 DURKHEIM ..................................................................................................................... 85 3.3 FOUCAULT...................................................................................................................... 96 4 THE PROBLEM OF HOW TO DEFINE CHILD ABUSE AND NOTIONS OF HARM116 4.1 CULTURAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL ELEMENTS ........................................................... 120 4.2 PROBLEMS WITH THE DEFINITIONS USED ....................................................................... 122 4.3 FINANCIAL ISSUES ........................................................................................................ 124 4.4 INTERSECTION OF FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL ................................................................ 129 4.5 POLITICAL: CHILDREN, THE FAMILY AND THE STATE .................................................... 132 5 THE BRAIN, THE BODY AND HUMAN SOCIAL RELATEDNESS............................ 158 5.1 "…A MEMORY WITHOUT WORDS" (STERN, 1985: 91) .................................................... 162 5.2 "WHAT IS REMEMBERED IN THE BODY IS WELL REMEMBERED." ..................................... 164 5.3 THE BRAIN ................................................................................................................... 165 5.4 HARRY HARLOW'S (IN)FAMOUS WORK WITH MONKEYS AND ATTACHMENT. ................... 170 5.5 FAILURE TO THRIVE...................................................................................................... 172 5.6 RESEARCH INVOLVING ROMANIAN ORPHANS ................................................................ 175 5.7 ATTACHMENT: THE SOCIAL BOND ................................................................................. 177 5.8 BOWLBY....................................................................................................................... 179 5.9 SO WHAT DOES ATTACHMENT DO? ................................................................................ 182 5.10 SOCIAL INTERACTION AND ATTACHMENT ..................................................................... 183 5.11 ATTACHMENT, QUALITY OF LIFE AND LATER LIFE RELATIONSHIPS ................................. 188 5.12 PROBLEMS WITH THE RESEARCH ................................................................................... 189 5.13 CONCLUSION: THE BRAIN, THE BODY AND HUMAN SOCIAL RELATEDNESS ..................... 190 6 CONCLUSION: "SOCIOLOGY IS THE ANSWER…WHAT WAS THE QUESTION?" 191 6.1 SOCIOLOGY AND THE BODY .......................................................................................... 192 6.2 THE SOCIOLOGY OF CHILD ABUSE ................................................................................ 195 7 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................... 197 1 Introduction "The notion that human life is social, in the sense that human life involves relationships with others, is not a discovery of sociology. What is distinctive about the treatment of this idea during the formative period of modern sociology is the strong intimation that the 'social' can be the subject of disciplined reflection." (Horton, 1965: 13) "The problem of the truth of what I say is very difficult for me, and it's also the central problem. It's essentially the question which up to now I have never answered." (Foucault, interview with Trombadori, 1991: 32) As Foucault himself said later in the same interview, he was not certain that intellectuals could identify the problems of the society they lived in. To do so, one needed to talk to "non-intellectuals", to help identify those things that affected them (Trombadori, 1991: 151-152). This raises some interesting questions: Can intellectuals tell the 'truth'?; What truth is there to tell?; and, should this 'telling' remain the preserve of the intellectual disciplines? Foucault's concern was that this intellectualisation of social theory served to prevent the opening up of what he termed 'real problems'. To overcome this, it was necessary to collaborate by listening to the non-intellectuals problems and to address localised problems (which in no way diminished their ability to be a general problem). In the same way that Foucault commented that his works are part of his life, his biography (Trombadori, 1991: 38), so too it is not possible to separate this thesis from my own experiences, work and life. Having worked in the field of child abuse, and