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SEX, SCIENCE, AND PSEUDOSCIENCE IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Recent years have witnessed the resurgence of biological explanations for gender norms, sexual desires, and human nature in general. This article traces the course of genomania (the reduction of social traits to genetic causes) and evolutionary psychology (the justification for supposedly universal institutional arrangements via speculative evolutionary scenarios) from the early 1990s to the present, drawing out their connection to institutional shifts, social struggles, and a changing political economy. It underscores the irony of biological reductionism's triumph in the public sphere: Ideas about a “hardwired,” immutable human nature circulate at a decidedly odd moment in human history, a period marked by pitched struggles around the politics of sex and by dramatic changes in gender roles—a time, in short, when not much really seems certain about the nature of men, women, and others. Contemporary bioreductivism is thus analyzed as an instance of fetishistic or magical thinking and as the basis for the spread of ever more dangerous forms of irrationalism in American political culture. In this context, relations among science, critical science studies, and the serious public sphere are reexplored, and a few practical propositions are offered in conclusion. Some passages in this article appear, in various contexts, in Lancaster (2003) and in ‘The Place of Anthropology in a Public Culture Reshaped by Bioreductivism,’ an article given an initial test run by colleagues in Cultural Studies and Anthropology at George Mason University. It was subsequently presented at the 101st annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, 20–24 November 2002, as part of a panel on ‘The Force of a Thousand Nightmares: Global Inequalities and the American Scene.’ Versions were also presented to the Cultural Studies program at the University of California, Davis; to an audience at the Lavender Languages conference; to diverse audiences at Northwestern University; as part of a ‘Meet the Author’ plenary panel at the meetings of the Society for the Anthropology of North America; and as part of an Social Science Research Council (SSRC) web forum on race and genomics (see also Lancaster [2004, 2005]). I would like to thank colleagues and students in these forums for helpful feedback and encouragement. The editors and three anonymous reviewers at Identities provided encouragement and helpful suggestions. Lastly, thanks to all the usual suspects, for good conversation and good ideas: Denise Albanese, Samuel Colón, the late Dwight Conquergood, Marcial Godoy, Micaela di Leonardo, Bill Leap, Jonathan Marks, Jeff Maskovsky, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Paul Smith, Daniele Struppa, and Brett Williams.