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Book
Digital Economy: 2024: Pocket Data Book
In press

Abashkin V., Abdrakhmanova G., Vishnevskiy K. et al.

M.: National Research University Higher School of Economics, 2024.

Article
Polarization of gender role attitudes across Europe

Lomazzi V., Soboleva N.

Journal of Contemporary European Studies. 2024.

Book chapter
Altruism, Morality, and the Morality of Altruism

Bykov A.

In bk.: Handbook of the Sociology of Morality, Volume 2. Springer, 2023. Ch. 14. P. 215-221.

Working paper
Attitude of Russians to the topic of material well-being: analysis of comments in social media

Fabrykant M., Magun V., Милкова М. А.

SocArXiv. SocArXiv. SocArXiv, 2023

Research Seminar “The Transcendence of the Social: Durkheim, Weismann, and the Purification of Sociology”

Event ended



The School of Sociology invites you to the lecture of 
Dr. Maurizio Meloni (Department of Sociological Studies, Sheffield University, Sheffield, UK)

“The Transcendence of the Social: Durkheim, Weismann, and the Purification of Sociology”.

Time: Tuesday 30 May, 18:10.
Venue: Myasnitskaya Ulitsa 11, Room 422.
If you need a pass to enter the building please contact Ekaterina Sokolova ksokolova@hse.ru

 

Abstract: Building on Fox Keller’s acute genealogy of the nature–nurture opposition as located in a certain specific social, cultural, and political history in the late nineteenth century (2010), in this paper, I address a parallel problem: the making of a really modern (i.e., non-biological) sociology nearly at the same time as the “hard disjunction” (Keller, 2010) between heredity and the environment, nature and nurture, was made. I argue rather provocatively that traces of borrowing from hard heredity to sociology can be seen in Durkheim’s strategic usage of Weismann to destroy Lamarckian sociology. The transcendence of the social in Durkheim is entirely isomorphic to Weismann’s transcendence of the germ plasm: in both cases, they aimed to construct objective realities, radically independent and exterior from individual tendencies and peculiarities. Weismann offered Durkheim an important scientific companion to make boundaries between sociology and biology. In a Latourian sense (Latour, 1993), the purification strategy of Durkheim was actually helped by a hybridization with Weismann’s biology. In conclusion, by taking Weismann as an anticipator of the genetics revolution a few years later, I argue for a profound complicity between twentieth century non-biological sociology and genetics. They both made space for a neat distinction between biological heredity and sociocultural transmission, heredity, and heritage. If sociology and genetics thought of themselves as rivals and even enemies in explaining social facts, they should reconsider their positions.