Neo-Liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology Book

This is one of those books that draws you in because of its title., and curiosity about what the author wants to say, and how plausible it is.

Susan McKinnon calls this book a "pamphlet" - indicating (to me anyway) that she's writing in the spirit of the early pamphleteers to critique a particular perspective, in this case that of evolutionary psychology, a topic I read about first in a book by the Jungian Anthony Stevens and Steve Price. This was many years ago and it would be fair to say that although it read well, it was a particular kind of discourse based on particular presumptions.

McKinnon's field is cultural anthropology, and she uses evidence from various research sources to question these presumptions. The title of the book identifies her core assertion that evolutionary psychology relies more on a depiction of human beings as operating in the same way regardless of culture, particularly with respect to gender relations which she links to US/European beliefs about marriage, jealousy and so on. What is outside her focus is that this particular view presented by evolutionary psychology appears routinely and without questioning, in public and social media.

Whilst the general field of evolutionary psychology is her target, she engages with the expressed ideas of people like Steven Pinker and David Buss and related interpretations of natural selection, selfish genes and so on. To be honest, I think Pinker is a soft target. I haven't read him for quite a while, but this is because I don't think he has credibility. I know he's a best-seller, but people have also bought Dan Brown.

McKinnon queries, legitimately in my view, particular presumptions about human behaviour in the deep past attributed to human beings (however defined) or, more recently, those identified as principles. In this respect, she sits easily alongside Matthew Engelke's book on anthropology, and he is acknowledged for his acknowledgement in this book.

The neo-liberal bit comes in when she demonstrates, quite forensically, that the presumptions about human beings from the field under critique arise out of a particular view of family and relationships that can be located in the 19th century i.e. Victorian. An additional presumption is the ascribing of monetary value/self interest to all relevant transactions, which sounds very much like homo economicus. McKinnon points out in a few examples that this presumption appears to transcend the data from cultural researchers so that the data is interpreted through this lens, rather than examined for what it is.

A side issue here, which for me is relevant to all kinds of research, is McKinnon's observations about samples and sample sizes, bluntly querying the utility and relevance of surveying university undergraduates 17-21 years of age, and extrapolating from that generalised human proclivities and behaviours. To be honest this is a softer touch than Steven Pinker, because it's so obvious and others like Jerome Kagan have critiqued it. There are models of all kinds based on employees in businesses and other organisations that are accepted for any consequent cultural claims.

I must admit I found the author's method extremely enjoyable. At various spots there's a lengthy paragraph pointing out what Buss, Pinker et all didn't think about: the questions they didn't address. This is additionally enjoyable because this book is not a polemic, notwithstanding her "pamphlet" comment, but an unrelenting questioning of particular claims made by a group of people whoi don't seem to have done their homework. Actually McKinnon continually asserts, with questioning and data, that the ideas presented by these people are not scientific and there is an implicit presumption that a particular world-view based on Victorian-era presumptions holds, or should hold for all cultures.

I wonder what she would say about Seligman's positive psychology, which has similar roots and biases?

This is one of those books that's slightly larger than hand-size (mine, anyway) and fortuitously it arrived at the post-office the day of a train journey. I finished it in the evening the same day. It's clearly written and logically presented and argued. Actually, it's an excellent demonstration of how to examine and critique written claims and ideas, and I suspect that if you were a student of hers, your work would also be vigorously assessed and the allocated mark would actually mean something. I don't know that, of course, but it seems plausible