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Between Soma and Society: Neuroscience and the Ontology of Psychopathy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2009

Martyn Pickersgill
Martyn Pickersgill
Affiliation:
Institute for Science and Society, West Wing, Law and Social Sciences Building University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD UK E-mail: LBXMP@nottingham.ac.uk
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Abstract

Contemporary neuroscience links together soma and society in complex ways, casting the brain as the locus of a matrix of reciprocal interactions between soma and society. Accordingly, critiques of such research which revolve around its perceived ‘reductionism’ and ‘determinism’ are rendered somewhat problematic. That is not to say, however, that a critical sociology of neuroscience is redundant. Drawing on interviews with different kinds of neuroscientists investigating psychopathologies associated with antisocial behaviour (specifically, antisocial personality disorder and psychopathy), this article draws attention to the degree to which, by assigning roles to both ‘biology’ and ‘environment’ in the development of antisociality, neuroscience complicates the ontology of these categories, while at the same creating possibilities for the emergence of new kinds of deviancy, and legitimating social intervention in ‘risky’ children. In aligning somatic and societal narratives for the development of psychopathology, contemporary neuroscience may resist older sociological criticisms of biological reductionism, yet, in so doing, generate new claims with novel ethical and political valence.

Keywords

Antisocial Personality DisorderEthicsNeuroscienceOntologyPsychopathyReductionism
Type
Articles
Information
BioSocieties , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 45 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2009

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