The 56th edition of Encephalon, the mind & brain carnival, is now up over at Combining Cognits. Besides being anti-social and on alcohol, it’s deeply stimulating. So if you’re looking for a legal defense or empathy, or just a yank on your momentum chain, go check out the cybernetic Encephalon put together by Paul Baxter.
Bad Boys or Bad Science
So here’s a recent New Scientist title: “Bad Boys Can Blame Their Behaviour on Hormones.”
All I can think is: New Scientist, Old School. Old, as in nature-nurture old and biological determinism old. Old as in moldy, rusted, failing ideas old.
But it’s not just New Scientist. Discover matches New Scientist with, “Teenage Hoodlums Can Blame Bad Behavior on Hormones.” And The Daily Mail delivers “Now Teenage Thugs Can Blame Their Hormones for Bad Behaviour.”
So what’s the problem? Well, it’s two-fold. First are journalists playing out a cultural script just like they subscribe to old-school cultural determinism. And second is some bad research that, not coincidentally, helps the journalists act like cultural automatons.
The cultural model goes like this: stereotypes, then blame, then biology. Take a stereotype we fear (“we” meaning journalists and readers alike). Bring in the politics and ideology of blame – hey, there’s a reason they are not like us, and why they threaten us. Invoke a cause, generally biological (though cultural causes come up too), outside of our particular realm of control. Hormones, nothing we can do about that, it means they were bad from the get-go. So we’re right to fear them and better make sure they don’t hurt us, whatever it takes.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the photos that accompany the articles. At the Daily Mail, a hooded guy point his hand like a gun at us the reader. Over at Discover, a crazed man with a clenched fist yells in our faces.
We all know journalists will play to stereotypes and will get research wrong and so forth. But in this case, like in most of the biologically-oriented research about complex human phenomena, the research only feeds into journalists typing out the normal crap.
The article in question is “Cortisol Diurnal Rhythm and Stress Reactivity in Male Adolescents with Early-Onset or Adolescence-Onset Conduct Disorder” (full access) by Graeme Fairchild, Stephanie van Goozen et al. and appears in the October 2008 issue of Biological Psychiatry. Neurocritic gives us the overview of the article if you don’t want to read the whole thing. (While I liked the Bad Boys music, I could have done with some more criticism in this particular Neurocritic post – but that’s okay, I’m going to play the bad boy this time.) Here’s the popular take from New Scientist on the article:
Out-of-control boys facing spells in detention or anti-social behaviour orders can now blame it all on their hormones. The “stress hormone” cortisol – or low levels of it – may be responsible for male aggressive antisocial behaviour, according to new research. The work suggests that the hormone may restrain aggression in stressful situations. Researchers found that levels of cortisol fell when delinquent boys played a stressful video game, the opposite of what was seen in control volunteers playing the same game.
Clashing Stones
The new Four Stone Hearth is up over at Clashing Culture, the latest round-up of the four fields of anthropology.
Want to know more about all the recent claims and controversy that our ancestors practiced the Mediterrean diet (well, ate plenty of shellfish)?
Paddy K, always funny and controversial, takes on a female gorilla in a pink outfit.
Do you just dig onomatopoeia?
Think linguistic anthropology is the most integrative and applicable of the four fields?
Then you should definitely check out the Four Stone Hearth.
Clashing Cultures is also hosting the latest Carnival of the Liberals, so take a look at that as well – some good reading as we near the end of this presidential race.
Clashing Culture explores issues related to the clash of science and religion, particularly evolution and creationism, and also examines atheism. Their recent Who Owns Our Child’s Minds asks important questions about what and how we teach our children. One blogger also hosts a radio show, the most recent covered theistic evolution and religious discrimination against atheists.
Wednesday Round Up #32
This week I am introducing a new feature, Top of the List, which highlights some of my favorites for the week. After that, I’ve got a fun one, Sarah Palin and Language, followed by sports, anthropology, the brain, and medicine and health care.
Top of the List
Greg Downey, Turning a Blind Eye
Our own Greg gets his chance to shine in Seed Magazine! Here he covers the media reaction to a supposedly “undiscovered” tribe in Brazil that reached global proportions back in May. He writes, “In truth, our reactions to and perceptions of these people reveal far more about us than about them.”
Jonah Lehrer, The Future of Science… Is Art?
Art, the practical constraints of present science, and future creativity and inspiration
Zane Andrews and Tamas Horvath, Why Calories Taste Delicious: Eating and the Brain
Scientific American piece on our desire to eat beyond homeostatic regulation
Daniel Zwerdling, A Meal Fit For A Candidate: Barack Obama
Chef Rick Bayless talks real Mexican food as he cooks up grilled skirt steak tacos. The real surprise, Bayless was a PhD student in anthropology at Michigan before choosing food over academics. I say he’s reached more people that way!
Sarah Palin and Language
Maureen Dowd, Sarah’s Pompom Palaver
NY Times op-ed with delicious humor: from speaking in tongues in Wasilla to channeling Clueless
Language Log has featured a series of posts on the Governor from Alaska
Also Outside
Affective Demonstratives
Palin’s Accent
Daniel Libit, Palin’s Accent Takes Center Stage
Politico dissects the politics and sociolinguistics of the Palin accent
Mr. Verb, Palin’s Accent and Syntax
One big verbal trainwreck?
The Neurocritic, Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick
A mavericky transcript… Includes a bonus, The Sarah Palin Show!
Carolyn Nordstrom: Fighting for a Healthy Global Economy
This video features my colleague Carolyn Nordstrom, and is part of the series “What Would You Fight For” that highlights Notre Dame professors in television commercials played during Notre Dame football games.
Carolyn is the author of numerous books that examine globalization, war, illegal economies, and the men, women and children caught up in those endeavors. Her most recent book is Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World. One of her best known is A Different Kind of War Story, where she writes, “This is a book about war, and about the remarkable creativity average people bring to the fore in surviving violence and rebuilding humane worlds.”
Carolyn has inspired me through her commitment to ethnography and the insight it provides into people’s lives. This type of ethnography is crucial to neuroanthropology. Here’s a blurb from a grant I once wrote:
This book is about how I imagine ethnography. We can see more in people’s words and actions that we do at present. I think of Oliver Sacks, the neurobiologist, who uses case studies to reveal a different perspective on how life plays itself out. Just like Giovanni challenged me with his words, I want to challenge other anthropologists to ask, Why? Why have we ceded so much ground to biologists and psychologists?
Good ethnographers time and again raise the everyday aspects of life, as Nordstrom (2004) does in presenting a child soldier’s answer to her question of why he was fighting: “I forgot,” he replied. As she notes, particular life histories, personalities and local sociocultural traditions shape the actions of ground soldiers. Forgetting, like wanting, does too. So how are we to understand that?
My answer is through ethnography that draws on both traditional and novel ways to examine how people act and interact with the world.
Ethos: Cultural Politics of Mental Health in Native North America
I thought this would interest some of you. Here’s the link to the online version. And for more info on Ethos, including the links to an entire issue on Jerome Bruner, just click here. Or check out the editorial office.
To view an online version of this email, click here.
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Neuroanthropology 
