Natur | Kultur

Abstract

Taking its departure from recent calls to „unify“ the sciences of nature, society and culture, or at least „to bridge the gap“ between these fields of inquiry, the article critically reviews these propositions, mainly suggested by biologists, neurologists, evolutionary biologists or evolutionary psychologists. These motions can be interpreted as an overdue reaction to perceived shortfalls of the dominant paradigms in the life sciences – namely genetic or molecular approaches – to cogently explain phenomena like complex diseases, organism–environment interactions, or „psycho-somatic“ phenomena. However, the suggested recourse to expand reductionistic epistemologies to social or cultural domains in order to „bridge the gap“ will be futile – as will be the insistence on „holistic“ approaches on the part of the humanities. Instead, the article argues that the history of socio-cultural anthropology / ethnology is rich in theoretical concepts to think about the interrelations of nature and culture. Starting from Rudolf Virchows concept of plasticity, Franz Boas’ notion of a somatic anthropology, and Marcel Mauss’ analysis of the cultured body, the article takes up recent ideas from anthropology, sociology, epidemiology and epigenetics to develop conceptual tools for a relational anthropology that will afford to analyze bodies as „naturecultural“.