A turn to biology: The future development of sociological knowledge

Abstract

The article is devoted to consideration of the issues of a “turn to biology” in modern social sciences. It is discussed how reasonable is the use of this term, and which new issues and phenomena have appeared in the field of social sciences because of this shift. Progress in biomedical knowledge and in medical technology and biotechnology has a significant impact on the sociological agenda, transforming not only beliefs about the bases of health, disease and functioning of the institute of medicine, but interpretation of social actions, practices, social structures and group cohesion. The article briefly describes both the process of penetration of biomedical terms and concepts in the discourse of the social sciences and the transformation of traditional ideas about the dichotomy of nature/culture. It is proposed to use the concept of biosociality by P. Rabinow as a promising concept for understanding of these phenomena. Two main research areas where the issues of the “turn to biology” are in the focus of attention were highlighted. First, we are interested in medicalization and in the associated processes of biomedicalization and genetization of society. Second, sociological interest in the body and its scientific interpretation are considered. Progress in biology, changing understanding of health and disease, has an impact not only on the individual and collective social practices of caring for the body (for example, “patients-in-waiting”), but also contributes to the formation of new kinds of social cohesion and structures of social inequality. The process of medicalization continues in biomedicalization and genetization of society, which are based on the view on the human body as a project or material, ready for modification. Resulting from the interaction between medical knowledge and political and economic institutions, biological and genetic realities permeate everyday life and become an object of interest for the social sciences. Special attention should be paid to the analysis of the shift in values of the modern society, according to which “biological/genetic” becomes a significant explanatory category in mundane and scientific discourses.