I’m in the field of sociology most closely linked to anthropology (I think), cultural sociology, studying the shape, form, and origin of “culture” and how it moves through time. I have found that in addition to raw brain biology (i.e., neurology), evolutionary theory (although less evolutionary psychology, which I often find to be problematic) and cognitive science are quite helpful. Since I started down this path a couple years ago (I’m only in my 3rd year on the tenure track), I’ve come to think in terms of “stochasticism” of cultural phenomena, seeing individuals and groups interacting in a complex environment that is simultaneously social (i.e., interaction with other humans and with human ideas) and obdurate (i.e., physical, objective). Mapping out the origins and progress of a cultural phenomenon requires thinking about the multiple causes and multiple and contradictory effects must include those biological factors but that the socio-cultural is also constitutive in turn on the biological.

Probably nothing radical or new to you here at Neuroanthropology, but within sociology, any mention of Darwin or cognitive science brings furrowed brows and concerned looks. Cognitive sociology as a subfield is highly reliant on Piaget (!) and postmodern theory and usually (not always) ends up disconnecting cognition and mind from embodied experience and from brains altogether (I’m being a bit simplistic here to illustrate). And cultural sociology, my subdiscipline, is completely awash in postmodern assumptions about the origins of “discourse” and the unknowability of the body at all.

The trick for me, and I’m gathering from your post here it’s similar for you in anthropology, to figure out how to convince other sociologists to take my work seriously and, as this blog said in some of its inaugural posts, to come up with a new language that refuses the nature/nurture dichotomy.

[P.S. My blog, which is linked to my name, is more a personal blog with some academic stuff thrown in, but wordpress automatically links it.]