The Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture

by Roger N. Lancaster

Roger N. Lancaster provides the definitive rebuttal of evolutionary just-so stories about men, women, and the nature of desire in this spirited exposé of the heterosexual fables that pervade popular culture, from prime-time sitcoms to scientific theories about the so-called gay gene. Lancaster links the recent resurgence of biological explanations for gender norms, sexual desires, and human nature in general with the current pitched battles over sexual politics. Ideas about a "hardwired" and immutable human nature are circulating at a pivotal moment in human history, he argues, one in which dramatic changes in gender roles and an unprecedented normalization of lesbian and gay relationships are challenging received notions and commonly held convictions on every front.

The Trouble with Nature takes on major media sources—the New York Times, Newsweek —and widely ballyhooed scientific studies and ideas to show how journalists, scientists, and others invoke the rhetoric of science to support political positions in the absence of any real evidence. Lancaster also provides a novel and dramatic analysis of the social, historical, and political backdrop for changing discourses on "nature," including an incisive critique of the failures of queer theory to understand the social conflicts of the moment. By showing how reductivist explanations for sexual orientation lean on essentialist ideas about gender, Lancaster invites us to think more deeply and creatively about human acts and social relations.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism, Science, Sexuality, Anthropology, Gender, Gender and Sexuality

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Professor of Anthropology and Cultural Studies at George Mason University.

Reviews

[Aimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lancaster's sort of snarky commentary on the movement to "naturalize" sex, gender, and sexuality was a real treat in my undergraduate anthropology class. For anthropologists, queer theorists, or eggheaded nerdy types with a sense of humor, this book pulls together a lot of aspects of the possible outcomes of studying desire "scientifically".

[Shirin · Rating 4 out of 5]

So maybe it wasn't a book that I picked up on my own from a bookstore. But so what that I had to read it for Anthropological Theory class? I loved it!
This book is education, yes; but at the same time, Lancaster's quirky sense of humor makes it much more fun than your average "I-was-assigned-to-read-this-book-so-shoot-me-now" required reading material. I particularly enjoyed the sections dealing with the "science" of homosexuality. Lancaster makes it clear that he does not "believe in" a "gay gene" or a "gay brain", but rather enculturation processes that may make men more "feminine" and women more "masculine" as described by their cultures.

[sdw · Rating 4 out of 5]

What does it mean to be a man? To what extent is it genetic? This book places scientific arguments of the possible genetics of gender and sexuality ("Is there a gay gene?") into their cultural contexts by examining popular culture representations of sexuality, gender, family and intimacy including news media, advertisements, and television shows.

Lancaster identifies the echoes of scientific racism and eugenicist thought in the search for a gay gene. Moreover, he points out that while identity transforms and is made unstable by social movements scientists restabilize it by identifying its genetic basis. He wants to distinguish a critique of sociobiology from an anti-science stance, making clear to point out the benefits of modern science. But the overall arguement is that culturally there is some sort of identity crisis happening (linked to late capitalism and flexible accumulation - new forms of production and consumption) and the search for gender and sexuality as scientific difference provides a return to nature as a way to stabilize identities.

Section One: Origin Stories "basic intellectual moves of sociobiology and evolutionary biology"

Section Two: Adam and Eve Do the Right Thing: "natural design" in science and social thought.

Section Three: Venus and Mars: Science, Politics and Mass Media. This is where you can read about popular science.

Section Four: Versions of Human nature: a critique of human nature

Section Five: Permutations on the nature of desire: This is about so-called scientific theories about homosexuality. He argues such representations are politically conservative.

Section Six: The End of Nature
*I especially enjoyed the section "Sex and Citizenship in the age of Flexible Accumulation" as the author engages the work of Lauren Berlant.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

ILL gave back before vacation and get when I come back



marie clare at L and C is using this book in May 2012


TOC
In the Beginning, Nature --
The Normal Body --
The Human Design --
Our Animals, Our Selves --
The Science Question: Cultural Preoccupations and Social Struggles -- Sexual Selection: Eager, Aggressive Boy Meets Coy, Choosy Girl --
The Selfish Gene --
Genomania and Heterosexual Fetishism --
Biological Beauty and the Straight Arrow of Desire --
Homo Faber, Family Man --
T-Power --
Nature's Marriage Laws --
Marooned on Survivor Island --
Selective Affinities: Commonalities and Differences in the Family of Man --
The Social Body --
The Practices of Sex --
This Queer Body --
The Biology of the Homosexual --
Desire Is Not a "Thing" --
Familiar Patterns, Dangerous Liaisons --
"Nature" in Quotation Marks --
Money's Subject --
History and Historicity Flow through the Body Politic --
The Politics of Dread and Desire --
Sex and Citizenship in the Age of Flexible Accumulation