Embodiment and Biological Knowledge: Public Engagement in Medicine and Science

In this course, we will explore when, why, and how biological ideas become salient to people’s identities and to political debates; whether and how closely popular conceptions of biology and the physical body match scientific and medical knowledge; and the variations in the extent to which biological knowledge is seen as relevant to particular conceptions of the self or social controversies over the body. Examples of topics that we may cover include: Why have vaccinations become controversial, and what understandings of the immune system underlie these controversies? What is the meaning of the “gay gene” to scientists, politicians, the public—and to lesbian, gay, or queer people themselves? How do hormones figure into our cultural understanding of gender and into people’s own gendered self-identities, particularly at times of hormonal change such as puberty, hysterectomy, or taking hormones as part of aligning the physical body with gender identity? How does the subjective nature of pain figure into controversies over contested illnesses such as fibromyalgia or repetitive strain syndrome? In sociology and anthropology, medical and scientific knowledge has often been described as alienating, distancing people from their direct embodied experiences.  Yet, to be a body is also always to be in a social context, so that perception is simultaneously cultural and physical. While medical and scientific knowledge provide us with ideas about our bodies that we cannot directly experience (e.g., our genes), these ideas can be deeply embedded and socially powerful explanatory systems. Thus, scholars have also argued that, rather than alienating us from our selves and our bodies, medical knowledge is constitutive of bodies and selves. Biological ideas and terms also circulate freely, so that popular conceptions of biology or physiology and scientific knowledge may not map neatly onto each other. We will explore these themes of bodily association and dissociation, science as alienating or constitutive, and popularization and expertise through several domains of biological knowledge, embodiment, and public debate such as: contested illnesses and the subjectivity of pain, hormones and gendered selves, genes and the politics of sexuality, and the immune system and anti-vaccination movements.