Revisiting the Left-Wing Response to Sociobiology: The Case of Finland in a European Context (2015)
This article revisits the left-wing response to sociobiology in the 1970s and 1980s by examining the sociobiology debate in Finland in a larger European context. It argues that the Finnish academic left's response to sociobiology represents a “third way” alongside the purely negative, often Marxist denial of biology's relevance, which characterized the left's response to sociobiology in many European countries such as Hungary and Sweden, and alongside the disregard that sociobiology confronted in most parts of Eastern Europe, as well as in Germany. In the context of the last great political conflict of the Cold War in Europe, the controversy over the American “Euromissiles” (Pershing II and Tomahawk) in 1979--1983, the Finnish academic left challenged the allegedly fatalistic sociobiological aggression and war theories with an alternative biological language, turning the increasing enthusiasm over evolutionary ideas into a pacifist cause. Using leftist and pacifist forums to inform citizens and politicians of such biologically evolved human characteristics as mutual care and sociability, the Finnish critics of sociobiology wished to boost the public spirit, and to rationalize the pacifist ideal of the European-wide popular movement against nuclear weapons and militarism. As a result, the academic leftists in Finland revived the early twentieth-century tradition of “peace biology.” A proper understanding of this development calls for an analysis that acknowledges Finland's special geopolitical and cultural position in the Cold War world between East and West.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Germuska, Pál;
(2019)
Balancing between the COMECON and the EEC: Hungarian elite debates on European integration during the long 1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB490676602/)
Article
Germuska, Pál;
(2009)
Conflicts of Eastern and Western Technology Transfer: Licenses, Espionage, and R&D in the Hungarian Defense Industry during the 1970s and 1980s
(/isis/citation/CBB911251255/)
Article
Werskey, Gary;
(2007)
The Marxist Critique of Capitalist Science: A History in Three Movements?
(/isis/citation/CBB000831585/)
Book
Avner Offer;
Gabriel Söderberg;
(2016)
The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn
(/isis/citation/CBB932673235/)
Article
Geert Somsen;
(2021)
The princess at the conference: Science, pacifism, and Habsburg society
(/isis/citation/CBB513842338/)
Chapter
Camilla Storskog;
(2014)
"Neanche i nostri pensieri più intimi ci appartengono": lo scienziato come strumento del potere in Kallocain (1940) di Karin Boye
(/isis/citation/CBB188577984/)
Book
Laurent Mazliak;
Antonin Durand;
Rossana Tazzioli;
(2013)
Des mathématiciens et des guerres: histoires de confrontations (XIXe-XXe siècle)
(/isis/citation/CBB888303208/)
Chapter
Elisabetta Vezzosi;
(2020)
«International inter-changes for the benefit of all mankind». Scienziati statunitensi allo Scientific Forum di Amburgo (1980)
(/isis/citation/CBB056972908/)
Book
Elisabetta Bini;
Elisabetta Vezzosi;
(2020)
Scienziati e guerra fredda: Tra collaborazione e diritti umani
(/isis/citation/CBB957549150/)
Article
Parr, Helen;
(2013)
The British Decision to Upgrade Polaris, 1970--4
(/isis/citation/CBB001201572/)
Book
Löwy, Ilana;
Krige, John;
(2001)
Images of Disease: Science, Public Policy, and Health in Post-war Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB000100784/)
Article
Pietro D. Omodeo;
(2016)
After Nikolai Bukharin: History of Science and Cultural Hegemony at the Threshold of the Cold War Era
(/isis/citation/CBB761792722/)
Book
Paul Betts;
Stephen A. Smith;
(2016)
Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB871767556/)
Chapter
Ilaria Zamburlini;
(2020)
Scienziati sovietici e diritti umani. Il dialogo transatlantico dopo Helsinki (1975-1979)
(/isis/citation/CBB159506658/)
Article
Perez, Myrna;
(2013)
Evolutionary Activism: Stephen Jay Gould, the New Left and Sociobiology
(/isis/citation/CBB001211787/)
Chapter
Myllyntaus, Timo;
(2003)
Discovering Switzerland: Internationalisation among Nordic Students of Technology prior to World War II
(/isis/citation/CBB000330998/)
Article
Wegener, Daan;
(2011)
“Das politische Welträtsel”: Ernst Haeckel en het Duitse liberalisme 1859--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001251338/)
Article
Depew, David J.;
(2010)
Darwinian Controversies: An Historiographical Recounting
(/isis/citation/CBB001032812/)
Book
Bill Yenne;
(2018)
The Complete History of U.S. Cruise Missiles: From Kettering's 1920s' Bug & 1950's Snark to Today's Tomahawk
(/isis/citation/CBB492959593/)
Chapter
Milam, Erika Lorraine;
(2010)
Beauty and the Beast? Conceptualizing Sex in Evolutionary Narratives
(/isis/citation/CBB001020306/)
Be the first to comment!