Etik, emotion, evolution
Symposium om Edvard Westermarck i nutiden
Åbo, Humanistcentret Arken (Fabriksgatan 2)
Auditorium Westermarck (gatuplan, rum C101)
Lö 17.3. 2012 12.00-16.00
I år har det gått 150 år sedan Edvard Westermarcks födelse. Hans arbeten om moral och emotioner, äktenskapets evolution samt religionen i Marocko blev världskända. Westermarcks arbeten har fått ny aktualitet tack vare det förnyade intresset i evolutionära förklaringar av människan. Å andra sidan har man börjar uppmärksamma känslornas roll i moraliska överväganden, något som Westermarcks teori lyfter fram.
Med två gästföreläsningar vill vi lyfta fram sambanden mellan nutidsdebatterna och deras idéhistoriska bakgrund. En fråga gäller vad som ledde till Westermarckskolans undergång, och huruvida kritiken mot Westermarck även träffar nutida förklaringsmodeller på mänskligt beteende och kontroverser kring detta, t ex i fråga om 'natur' resp 'kultur'.
Olli Lagerspetz börjar med en kort inledande översikt.
Juhani Ihanus talar med rubriken "Westermarck, Malinowski and the 'wild things': The interface between anthropology and sexuality research".
Ullica Segerstråle talar med rubriken "The Westermarck hypothesis: a model for reconciliation of 'nature' and 'culture' explanations?".
Symposiet arrangeras med understöd av Svenska Kulturfonden och Konestiftelsen.
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Olli Lagerspetz är docent och akademilektor i filosofi vid Åbo Akademi. Han leder foskningsprojektet Westermarck and Beyond: Evolutionary Approaches to Morality and their Critics.
Juhani Ihanus är docent och lektor i psykologi vid Helsingfors Universitet. Han har bl a gett ut böckerna "Kadonneet alkuperät: Edvard Westermarckin sosiopsykologinen ajattelu" (Helsinki 1990) och "Multiple Origins: Edward Westermarck in Search of Mankind" (Frankfurt am Main 1999).
Ullica Segerstråle är en finländsk sociolog och professor vid Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Hon har skrivit bl a boken "Defenders of the Truth" (Oxford 2000) som analyserar "vetenskapskriget" kring sociobiologin.
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Program
Plats: Auditorium Westermarck, Humanistcentret Arken (gatuplan, rum C101),
Fabriksgatan 2, 20500 Åbo.
12.00 (obs tidpunkt) - 12.30 Olli Lagerspetz: Inledning
12.30-14.00 Juhani Ihanus: "Westermarck, Malinowski, and 'the Wild Things': The interface between anthropology and sexuality research".
14.15-14.30 Paus
14.30-16.00 Ullica Segerstråle: "The Westermarck hypothesis: a model for reconciliation of 'nature' and 'culture' explanations?"
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Abstract (Juhani Ihanus)
The lecture deals with personal and scientific relations between Westermarck and Malinowski, delineating their agreements and disagreements on the "wild" issues of sexuality, instincts, drives, incest and the Oedipal complex. The interface between anthropology and sexuality research was constructed by Westermarck and Malinowski in their own ways, but both of them were in favor of future collaboration between the social sciences and sexuality research (mostly excluding psychoanalysis) through empirical studies on social institutions and cultural "facts" related to the regulation of the "wild things".
Abstract (Ullica Segerstråle)
The explanation of human behavior as an exclusively cultural product - the reigning paradigm after the Second World War - got a serious blow in the last quarter of the 20th century with the rise of sociobiology. The result was a major academic conflict, setting social scientists against biologists. (Meanwhile, solutions already existed to the seeming opposition between nature and culture, and more were emerging). The controversy caused E O Wilson to develop a new, alternative sociobiological paradigm ("sociobiology 2.0"), attempting to connect nature and culture in Genes, Mind, and Culture. In that and later books one of Wilson’s prime examples of the nature-culture connection was the phenomenon of incest (presented as undesirable for both biological and cultural reasons). But although Wilson’s point always seemed to be exactly the Westermarck effect, Westermarck was typically not cited by name until 1998, when he was made the hero of Wilson’s book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. In other words, the Westermarck effect became a sort of glue that kept the various Wilsonian arguments together.The critics of sociobiology, again, seem to have doubted the Westermarck effect, but this was not central for them.