Bertilsson - The Social as Trans-Genic on Bio-Power and Its Implications for the Social

The Social as Trans-Genic: On Bio-Power and Its Implications for the SocialAuthor(s): Thora Margareta BertilssonReviewed work(s):Source: Acta Sociologica, Vol. 46, No. 2, The Knowledge Society (Jun., 2003), pp. 118-131Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4194972 .Accessed: 02/05/2012 02:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ActaSociologica.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sageltd

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4194972?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

m ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 2003

The Social as Trans-Genic On Bio-Power and its Implications for the Social

Thora Margareta Bertilsson University of Copenhagen

ABSTRACT This article has a triple aim: (1) it explores how the stunning advance of modern bioscience is affecting the social world, and how once-set boundaries are now being quickly transgressed; (2) it is suggested that the theoretical divides between modernists and post-modernists can be fruitfully viewed, from a sociology of knowledge perspective, as traces of a much more profound and ongoing evolutionary discourse now also affecting the social and the human sciences; (3) concerns are expressed regarding the destabilization of both the natural and the social world alike as a consequence of bioscience: the long-term social effects of the emphasis on individual choice, as presently argued, will eventually erode the system of collective responsibility altogether.

KEYWORDS: global nature, knowledge society, Latour, modernity/postmodernity, social evolution

This article starts with a question and ends with a question: what will happen to the social category when nature becomes culture and culture becomes (imagined) nature? Is the social category and, as a consequence, a distinct sociological domain, becoming superfluous? How will our discipline be affected by the ongoing biotechnological revolution?

Let me initiate this article with some notable observations recently read in the daily press.

In the middle of June 2001, a story captured the world press. It was about a French woman who at the age of 62 gave birth to her first child. The child was fathered by her own brother (age 52) in an in vitro conception with another woman, whose eggs in turn were implanted into the womb of the 62-year-old woman. The French woman had received hormone treatment which enabled her to give birth at an old age to a child fathered by her own brother. At the same time, the rugmother gave birth to yet another child by the same father.

It is not just the family situation that is 'unnatural', so also is the 'trafficking' between continents and between the legal and medical

professions. The woman and her brother trav- elled to Los Angeles, where the transaction was performed by a gynaecologist presumably after having received an (undisclosed) sum of money. The blood siblings escaped from French medical-professional control of their social genealogy and exerted their consumer rights in the unscrupulous Californian dream landscape. Back in France, as the press coverage revealed, their neighbours were saying that the family had always seemed a bit odd. Living together with the two siblings in France was an elderly mother. Here, we have an example of a genuine nuclear family.

The LA gynaecologist later said he would probably not have done the inception had he been cognizant in advance of the intricate family connections. The intriguing event raised the ethical problem world-wide whether this was incest or not. In a strict medico-juridical sense, it was not incest. Between the two blood siblings the American woman served as a belt of transmission.

This allegedly odd family constellation living in the French countryside seems to be the quintessential post-modern family exerting

Acta Sociologica Copyright O 2003 Scandinavian Sociological Association and SAGE Publications (London. Thousand Oaks. CA and New Delhi: www.sagepublications.com) Vol 46(2): 1 18-1 31[0001-6993](200306)46:2: 11 8-1 31 033887

Bertilsson: The Social as Trans-Genic 1 19

their constructivist rights of having a family in a de-traditionalized and re-embedded manner. They secured their genealogical heritage by untraditional means. The intelligent use of science helped them in reproducing a 'natural' family, i.e. a family of blood lineage. They trav- elled across state boundaries, and found a medical doctor who was willing to help them perform the services for a sum of money. Modern technology helped them in preserving and intensifying intimate life demands. The question is whether we are to consider this rural family as an historical subject pointing the way to the future - or are we to consider it as a human aberration and deviant case? Is the family drawing up the pattern for normal practices in the future?

There are also many other bioscientific bits of news capturing our attention at present. Last year, two lesbian women living in Sweden in a declared partnership decided to break up. The problem was that with the help of a male friend of theirs they had nurtured two children. According to Swedish law, the male assistant was the biological father and, after the break up of his lesbian friends, he was made responsible for the well-being of the children. This legal outcome had not been foreseen at the original scene, and was not at all pleasing the father. Legal conventions cannot possibly keep pace with scientific advances. Whether or not such inertia is to the benefit of the social order as a whole is an interesting sociological question.

A couple of months ago we read about yet another lesbian couple, this time in the US. Both parties were suffering from severe hearing deficits as a result of a special genetic defect that they had in common. Since they regarded their own hearing handicap as a special cultural resource, they wanted to foster a child who would inherit the same genetic defect. For this reason they were in need of genetic manipu- lation in sorting out the desirable eggs to be implanted into the womb. The ethical question that arose in the wake of this case was how much one's private wishes should be regarded in designing babies? What was once brute nature can now evolve into a cultured and deliberate process. But is there a threshold for such human tinkering with nature?

As yet, we do not know whether these cases are merely marginal, or if they are the avant garde for normal practice in the future? In any event, their multiplying occurrence is

destabilizing long-term moral and social practice. Culture invades nature, while from a dialectical point of view it becomes more and more 'naturalized'. What will the consequences be of such conscious 'natural selection' processes for human evolution and human species? Is the incest taboo as known from classical social texts now outdated? When nature no longer provides human society with its boundary conditions (for normal practices), where will they be settled?

How far can we exploit modern biotechnology without offending long-standing human conventions and customs? The dilemma between what is possible in a bioscientific perspective and what is desirable in a legal-social horizon actualizes the problem of the social in a knowledge society: it is caught between the rapidly advancing progress of biotechnological possibilities and the legal- conventional standards of long-term moral demands. This is not a new problem as far as the social category is concerned, but because of recent scientific advances the problem of the social as a hybrid between raw and cultivated nature is accentuating dramatically.

Transgressing human and territorial boundaries

Present advances in the biotechnic spheres touch the conditions of social and human life profoundly (Fukuyama, 2002) and are conjec- tured at the same time as traditional state boundaries are being perforated by global and regional challenges. Whether or not we are dealing with a complex evolutionary resettling of boundaries affecting the conditions of both biological and territorial nature will not be explicitly dealt with here, although it is difficult not to think in these ways.

A perspicuous example illustrating the combined uprooting of territorial and biological life is the case of the controversial Icelandic gene-bank that has captured Nordic news in the past couple of years (Koch, 2002). This was an attempt to scientifically exploit the remarkable Icelandic gene-stock in order to capitalize on its genetic potentiality world-wide. These efforts raised the serious question of genetic ownership: Who owns our genes? Are they personal belongings? Are they considered to be the cultural heritage of a nation - or are they, more radically, to be regarded as an

120 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 46(2)

instance of World Heritage, like the Grand Canyon? If it is at all possible to exploit our collectively assembled genetic resources across many generations for purposes of human health (and human happiness), is it ethically defensible or deplorable to deny the possibilities of such human progress? A recent account of the controversial Icelandic endeavour reveals a curious split in opinions dividing not only the Icelanders themselves but also the Icelanders and foreign professional expertise. While experts launch concern on ethical and principle grounds, a majority of Icelanders, as expressed in public opinion polls, favour the creation of a genetic bank having in prospect the accumu- lation of national wealth not wholly different from the Norwegian oil wealth. If the genebank is created, the Icelandic State will take over ownership after the first 12 years of operation in private ownership.

In French post-modern theory of the past decades (Baudrillard, Deleuze, Guattari), the revitalizing of Nietzsche's philosophy has led to deconstruction of the individual as merely a dividual, as an assemblage of divisible parts (Osterberg, 1988: 217-35). As shown in the Icelandic example of the gene-pool, individuals are increasingly conscious of their own exploitable bodily resources. To preserve the individual in the future may require the declar- ation of a sanctorum, a psychic-physic ground like that of the soul in religious discourse, which for certain practical purposes is considered an essentially holy relict (Fukuyama, 2002). The cultural construction of an individual is needed especially in the case of legal and moral discourse, where the idea of a free will and free consent is a precondition for the further exploitation of its own divisible parts. A great problem may evolve as a consequence of the ongoing battle concerning the notion of the individual. For the scientific-technological complex, the individual is an exploitable resource and efforts to preserve her holiness by the legal-moral- ethical complex are at the same time considered a barrier to the progress of science. It is in this battle between an exploitable nature and a sanc- tified humanity that the social world (and sociology) will have to serve as a mediator - and the question is how? One may already ask: on whose side are we on?

Bruno Latour's attack on the Great Divide

The French philosopher/sociologist, Bruno Latour, is known as the social theorist par excel- lence attacking the Great Divide between Nature and Culture as a last bastion of High Modernity still fighting for continued recognition. Because of this great divide perforating classic social thought up to now, we have problems in recog- nizing a third estate of hybrids, the sets of complex action networks needed to secure the division (Latour, 1993). It is Latour's view that the 'modern constitution' is founded upon the separation of powers between nature and culture, and that this separation is guaranteed by at least four premises.

(1) Modernity made nature into a distinct and separate realm beyond and away from the fabric of society. Such a premise is contrary to pre-modern thought, where a continuing tinkering (with half-gods and half-humans) goes on between Nature and Culture. Thanks to the guarantee of this separation, a natural realm exists which is uncontami- nated by the social and cultural world.

(2) Another premise of Modernity and a corollary of the first one is that of an immanent Social Order where Free Men and Women settle their internal constitutional affairs without the disturbance of an unruly Nature. This premise is essential not the least for modern legal thought and its positivity claims; individuals author their own laws and, therefore, a change of laws is possible. If Nature's demands were to affect the Human Constitution, men would no longer be free to settle their own laws. With Immanuel Kant's distinctions in mente, human laws would be heteronomous rather than autonomous; they would no longer be based on free will.

(3) Yet another guarantee ensures the separation of powers between Nature and Society, and that is the continuous banning of quasi-objects and quasi-subjects. These are made up of a magnitude of action practices, verbal and non-verbal, which secure the strict separation. As with the incest taboo, cross-bordering is strictly illegal. Should such cross-bordering still occur, it surfaces as abnormal and deviant practice. The abnormality upholds the natural and the human orders as distinct and asym- metrical.

Bertilsson: The Social as Trans-Genic 121

(4) A fourth corollary is the negligence of the Celestial World as having no relation what- soever to either of the other two super- powers. Divine power is efficiently ruled out from the exercise of power in the real world of humans and nature as it is granted a third and separate estate, that of Pure Faith. The modern (terrestrial) construction of Nature is ripped off sensuality and spiritu- ality. As pure and raw nature, it is also immanently exploitable. This is very much contrary to the beliefs of the pre-moderns. By the same token, the construction of a pure human order assumed a realm of pure cognitive Faculty, of free will, free choice and the exercise of pure reason. The roman- ticist reaction attempted an attack on pure Knowledge and a reconstruction of sensuous Nature (Latour, 1993: 13-35).

French post-modern thought, and the theories of Bruno Latour in particular, has had a great impact on a number of modern directions in social theory. Not the least has modern feminism profited from these theories in terms of the consequences for gendered everyday practice. Various directions in queer theory have followed troops (Seidman, 2001). Modern studies in science and technology belong perhaps to that genre which has been most affected by these new currents of thoughts. Here, hybrid, monsters and transgressing boundary studies really flourish. Proponents of social constructivism are now jumping on the bandwagon to deconstruct whatever natural distinctions there may still be around. Such studies are often occasioned by a motivation to free men and women from oppressive natural and societal demands. Unless caution is exer- cised, there is a risk that such studies will rebound into a realm of pure freedom, i.e. the point of false premises that their own intellec- tual roots had originally sought to deny.

I have chosen to present Latour's theme on 'we have never been modern' as a primary example of a new genre in social theory increasingly concerned with the productions of hybrids, monsters, artefacts, and so on. This is done because of its great impact on many young students of social and cultural life, but also because of its own immanent radicalism. It is not just questioning Nature's claim to autonomous power; equally it is questioning the realm of a social order existing as separate and autonomous from that of Nature. Indeed, in the vein

of Latour's spirit, some of his disciples in the social studies of science have questioned the idea of the social sphere as being merely a corollary of existing action networks (actants). These action networks are made up of sociologists, university departments, sociology journals and books with a heavy investment in furthering the existence of their own symbolic-material universe (Shapin, 1995). Seen from this radical point of view, the social category has no existence sui generis, but is merely an artefact that helped secure the Great Division and its corollary of asymmetric claims. No doubt the consequences of these new radical currents of social-cultural thought seriously challenge the reproduction of disciplinary thought as such.

My mentioning Bruno Latour's work, as well as relating to a number of other currents in social and cultural theory, is for the purpose of situating such theoretical practices in the wider context of a re-modelling of the human and natural landscape due to the undeniable advance of modern bioscience. It might well have been that one of Latour's main targets was purposed by his radically constructivist attack on the bastion of the natural sciences as relating to a domain sui generis. The science war of the past years was spurred not the least by the popularity of the new sociology of science, technology and cultural studies on US university campuses. Here advocates of the natural sciences stroke vehemently back on what they conceived to be an irrationalism inherent in social and cultural sciences having no goods to deliver, but merely diffuse cultural critique. Tra- ditional US sociologists also seized on the bandwagon, criticizing recent turns in sociology and their younger colleagues for again inviting the irrationalism of an embattled science which an older generation had been in the forefront to attack (Horowitz, 19 9 3). Ironically, or perhaps it was to be expected, the subsequent fight between advocates of purity and those of more impurity (as cross-bordering) seems to end in the restored Sovereignty of the Classical Divide. At a time when the advance of science tres- passes traditional knowledge faculties, the inertia of disciplinary borders is difficult to perforate.

The discussion pro and con of new currents of social thought is often done in abstracto, as if they are candidates for a new descriptive turn with the radical aim of dis- turbing the common sense of natural social practices juxtaposed to more modernist


practices preserving the Great Divide. Some years ago, and perhaps it is still going on, the social science stimulated by Michel Foucault, as opposed to the modernist claims of Jiirgen Habermas, captured the attention of many social theory seminars. As is well known from the history of science, great battles in the sciences are seldom won by means of pure argument and reason alone. As Max Planck noted a century ago, such battles are settled by natural history, because the advocates of the losing side often die out while the vigorous new debate is fought by the combined strength of youth and vitality. This is not the victory of human reason but the consequent practices of natural and social selection! Bruno Latour has furthered the claims first raised by Planck, because his arguments and study imply that Louis Pasteur won France and the Nobel Prize because of the power in setting up his laboratory and in organizing its social (and natural) practices. The present practice in many social studies of questioning the Sovereignty of the Actor and the Sanctuary of the Individual, in conjunction with the distinction of practices which upheld these sovereignties, may well be seen as adjacent corollaries of much more profound (socio- natural) processes in biological and human evolution.

There is a fruitful parallel in the field of international relations today: the sovereignty of the state was upheld as long as dominant social and political practices from the outside halted at state boundaries in order to honour international law. But such practices are now intervening in internal national affairs if there is a suspicion that human rights are being violated. The war against the former Yugoslavia could serve as a precedent. Today, the US shows little respect for old-time international law. Powerful social forces impinge upon the operation of the sovereign state both from above and beyond. Modern wars seem no longer to be predomi- nantly fought between Sovereign States but seem more often to be fought between its 'dividual' parts. Regions, as for instance in the case of Kosovo, can call upon outside, global, support in strengthening their own emancipa- tive efforts. Certainly, states are crucial adminis- trative entities in a global order, and, in the absence of alternatives, they will most likely remain as such. However, the point is that they are no longer as robust as they once used to be.

In the case of the knowledge society, the sovereignty of the state is even more fragile. The

ban on stem cell research issued by President Bush is a good example, as it re-oriented American research money massively into supporting stem cell research elsewhere, not the least in Sweden. The money flow is not just federal money emanating from the National Institute of Health, it also largely stems from the American Diabetes Association, a private patient organization. While the present US government, on moral and religious grounds, finds it objectionable to continue with a slaugh- tering of embryos in order to manipulate with genes, the US research establishment can just move elsewhere. Of sociological interest in this particular case is the role of 'civil society' in terms of the American Diabetes Association: In symbiosis with the multinational pharma- ceutical industry, patient organizations need no longer honour national laws (Bertilsson, 2002).

The parallelism between the deconstruction and weakening of the State Organism and that of the (post) Modern Individual is fruitful in the extent to which it allows us - as students of social practices - to reach beyond particulars and see the re-shaping of the classic Body State in a much wider landscape. In the case of global society, the weakening of the modern state organism is found at many levels: economic, cultural, political and psychological. In the case of the individual as a micro-biological assemblage of cells and genes, modern science has revealed the operative practices of the life process itself. These operative practices could not possibly be conceived of in a vacuum, because they interrelate with the laboratory and communicative practices of the gene biolo- gists in intricate ways: social practices and the way we 'see' nature and its possibilities are not readily separated. In this regard, Latour's actants seem indeed a useful concept. The philo- sophical question of whether the cell divisions were there long before the human eye could catch them, and therefore have an independent ontological status, is not of concern here. However, the concerted social and communicative practices making possible the discovery of the human genome are of concern by reason of its complex global production where thou- sands of scientists cooperate across the globe. These new actants are today reshaping the nature/society link with considerable consequences for traditional state monopolies. Patient organizations need not, as in the case with the diabetes association above, honour national state laws (Callon. 1999).


As is clearly evident from the discussion so far, I have found a good deal of inspiration in Bruno Latour's work. The intricate reconfigura- tions of interrelated social and natural practices as well as possibilities and difficulties that result from such new landscaping give rise to new ways of looking. A new sociological spectrum seems indeed to emerge from these SST studies. Not being a post-modernist myself, and hence not having the yearning for immanent critique of 'local practices', I find it much more profitable at this point to link up with the efforts of, among others, John Urry and his realist colleagues (2001). In laying the grounds for what they call a 'new social science', no longer focusing solely on the social bound by the traditional state, or for that matter by relations among actors-individuals, they turn to the study of new configurations in a world of great complexities. Global economy, global culture and global tourism are examples of such new configurations reshaping social relations across national and individual borders. Solidarity protests are no longer limited to merely humans, but seem more potent the more of nature that such protests embody (Franklin et al., 2001). Modern bioscience is also rewriting the notion of the social, because individuals are merely the surface structures of much more complex genetic processes, the boundaries of which go far beyond the confine- ments of the bodily individual. Genes are collective resources with great power to define human health and human lusts. Economic, political and cultural practices are today intervening in regard to the further exploitation of genetic materials. We do not yet know the outcome of this epochal battle. But to conceive of the social, as merely that of Alfred Schutz's world of consociates or contemporaries seems today as short-sighted as confining political authority to the territorial state. The social today is not only a product of the past, it also carries the possibilities of the future. Today we can vaguely sense a rewriting of our socio-natural setting to include a much wider spatial-temporal spectrum beyond the old body-state.

New interfaces: global nature, global culture

Stimulated not the least by Latour's challenging of the Great Divide, a recent book by Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury and Jackie Stacey (2001) explores a wealth of new interfaces and

openings between nature and society. Very diverse sources from anthropology, the genealo- gies of natural history, recent gene biology, film studies and marketing strategies are being presented. As social science students we are greatly enriched: the study of the natural world need no longer be alien to us. C. P. Snow's 'two cultures' may finally merge and evolve into a new and joint project (Snow, 1959).

Relying heavily on the British anthropolo- gist Mary Strathern's recent work, Franklin and co-authors are especially intrigued by how the distinction male-female assumes both a natural and a social/cultural dimension. Strathern has invented the term 'after nature model' in depicting the features of especially modern Western society (p. 47). The effect of the 'after nature' model of modern society is that the 'social', as we know it from Hobbes and Rousseau especially, is to be governed by social laws, by custom and conventions. In classic legal litera- ture, we speak of the Positivity claims of the modern social order: we make our own laws, and, accordingly, we can also change them. However, these contingencies of the social would be threatening were it not for the existence of some stabilizing forces to be found in the impermeable laws of nature itself. In an accen- tuated way, we see the emergence of asymme- tries between the two great powers of Modernity. While culture (and society) in principle is changeable and subject to the Human Sover- eign, nature is governed by impermeable laws and is as such outside the range of human whims. However, the Great Divide is also in need of a buffer zone (like the case of Finland during the Cold War!). For all practical purposes, this zone is found in the hybrid forms of primitive social orders. Family laws, and the laws governing male and female behaviour, are illustrations of such necessary hybrids of cultivated primitive forms where nature and culture intersect. In its more primitive conceptions, the notion of society illustrates such a hybrid where human intercourse is more genuine (natural) than in the kind of artificial societies built on trade and commerce. In fact, this dual notion of the social, containing both nature and culture, has long furnished social theory with classic tensions. One is the German yearning for Kultur as against that of the French for Civilisation (Smith, 2001). Culture in this regard is not nature, but is to reflect and mirror the demands of natural sentiments. Civilization, however, characterizes human plasticity and the possibility of progress.


While culture is history and behind, civilization is politics and ahead.

What is partial about these connections is the way in which, for example, society belongs and does not belong to nature; what is merographic about these linkages is the different ways nature and culture overlap. The preservation of the after-nature model of society, as both part and distinct from nature, is. in Strathern's view, evident in the hybrid institution of kinship, understood to be composed of ties of blood and ties by law. (Franklin et al., 2001: 47)

The significance of Strathern's work, as referred to by Franklin et al., is that it helps to reveal the various 'hybrids' in modern culture where nature and society overlap.

Ideas of the social are installed in nature through concepts such as genealogy (before Darwin's usage not a naturalised concept), and ideas of the natural are installed in the social, for example, through the idea of a biological relative. (Franklin et al., 2001: 47)

Strathern's notion of hybrids seems of great significance in illuminating the social/natural grounds of the feminine and the masculine respectively, not the least in the way we have inherited this distinction from the seminal work of Simone de Beauvoir. The modern sex/gender distinction is an example of the two-way trafficking between nature and culture, and the difficulty in assessing what is nature and what is culture further accentuates the social functions of hybrids: they help in upholding the Great Divide. Classic and modern feminism richly illustrates the various tensions that such hybrids have caused for 'the woman's question'.

What is further surfacing in the rich source material of the book is the genealogy of natural history, especially as it came to unfold with regard to the fossil, that most archaic and primitive thing of past times. Its genealogy reveals the power of naming and classifying things in accordance with a distinct logic. The Technology of Representations has become the seminal contribution of Michel Foucault's work depicting the processes whereby sensuous nature in the name of modern science is gradually stripped of its own 'commentaries'. Naming things from above, as we know from the classificatory botanical tables of Carl von Linne, leads to natural things now being raped of their own contextual relations. Modern classificatory science subjects nature to a new form

of (artificial) reason; names are imposed upon natural things the effects of which are that nature is silenced and subjected to the power of human reason. The accelerating process of science, not the least possible because of laboratory science, subjects nature to more and more serious invasions. The separation of power between nature and society, needed for human reason to develop freely, gradually introduces an asymmetry between culture and nature. Nature becomes subdued to Culture, but a distinct sanctorum is still needed. Scientific truths come to 'reflect' the actual operations of nature. However, nature still possesses unpre- dictable powers as it erupts as 'natural catas- trophes': earthquakes, fires, thunder, flooding. Nature upholds mystical power as it possesses not yet revealed connections and secrecy. The mystical power of a not yet completely subdued Nature is revealed in the popular discussions of 'risk societies'. When elementary nature is exploited, an artificial nature created by us is surfacing. The revenge of nature takes the form of risks and dangers. The distanciation process between nature and society, demanded by the process of modernity, has had a price. 'Hybrid realms' cause not only great embarrassment, they are also difficult to govern and to under- stand. As an illustrative example, the Marquis de Sade has long exerted a strong fascination on the minds of moderns.

The freeing of society from the external demands of nature achieved its apex with the legal history of the late 18th century and with the great codifications, first in France and a century later in Germany. Franklin and her co- authors do not record legal history in the text, but it has to be mentioned because of the great impact that legal history and theory have had on the notion of a society governed by human laws (Kelsen, 1943 ). Modern positive law clearly reflects the tension between legal positivism and natural law. The proponents of the former (Hans Kelsen, Alf Ross and H. L. Hart) strongly feared that natural law interfered with the positivity of modern law with consequences for the conception of Sovereign Power. The great Austrian legal theorist of the early 20th century, Hans Kelsen, conceived the process of legalization as a process of domestication of a primitive social world. Contrary to the laws of nature, human laws were science-driven. So conceived, positive law elaborated on and refined the power of a plebiscitory will. Should that will ever be replaced by another sovereign will, laws would


have to change as well. But Kelsen had strong faith in modern legal science, as its systematiz- ing efforts promised some stability in what otherwise could evolve as chaos. In modernity, positive legal science became a substitute for the boundary conditions once supplied by external nature. The current popularity of Carl Schmitt, the legal scholar and sympathizer of the Nazi regime in the 1930s, seems to reside in nothing other than that Schmitt objected to the normal- izing procedures of a systemic legal science. Instead, Schmitt worshipped the revolutionary moment (die Ausnahme) when natural forces broke up the established order and installed a new Sovereignty, at the time in terms of Hitler (Bertilsson, 1984).

Of interest in a Scandinavian setting is the suspicion harboured by the great Danish legal theorist Alf Ross against sociology as presented in the 1950s by Theodor Geiger, the first professor of sociology in Denmark and the founder of Acta Sociologica (Ross, 1954). In the view of Alf Ross, Geiger's sociology of law was not based on legal (logical) thought but on 'natural studies' of the social. If such a sociological understanding of law were to gain in popular power, which Ross suspected it never would, the sociology threatened to introduce - through the backdoor - a concept of nature which legal thought for centuries had worked to ban at the front door. The classical tension between sociology and law, captured by Alf Ross, remains alive to this date, as the two disciplines stand on the two antagonistic poles of a continuum preserving the Great Divide: culture versus nature.

However, also within legal life, a very different view of the nature/society distinction is today replacing legal positivism. Now constel- lations of world powers fight in the global space, and nature has become a vital source of refer- ence. Legal pluralism is pushing the old positive state law into the background and it is no longer popular to uphold the distinction between nature and society (Sousa Santos, 1995). Modern science and modern law are finding new links in the power of modern natural bioscience to restore a natural world with extin- guished species. World Heritage, the restoration and preservation of the past have become the goals of global culture and global law. Modern capitalism prides itself in its ethical twist, the meaning of which, apart from not using child labour or other forms of ruthless exploitation, refers to scientific potentialities in re-discovering and re-shaping natural things and species of the

past. Among new spectacular events are the attempts, by means of DNA technology, to give rebirth to the ancient beasts, to the dinosaurs of long past geological eras (Franklin et al., 2001: 215).

The Jurassic Park syndrome has inspired Natural History Museums all around the world to enter a new drive whereby we are no longer merely spectators of dead life, but instead are entertained by means of fancy technology and encouraged to participate in the spectacular events of nature and of history. Not only have modern technologies erased the distinction between amusement and science proper, they have also recovered the 'pastness of time' and restored it as the infotainment of the immediate present. In this process, science itself becomes spectacular, because it is no longer confined merely to registering and cataloguing stones, fossils, natural and human artefacts (as in past centuries). It is within the power of modern natural science to shape and recreate events and thus stage new pathways of history where nature(s) and culture(s) can meet in new and hybrid forms. We have long been aware that social history can be told from many points of view, but modern technology now enables us to set 'natural history' free from its uniform and linear past. The distinction between what is real and what is imagined has not only erased the distinction between Hollywood (Spielberg's movies) and science proper, it has also opened up for a flexibilization of what we used to call 'reality'.

Reality is no longer what merely is, but is shaped by the possibilities of future inventions and human genius. The spectacular interactive technologies of the present allow for an entirely new meeting between the humans and their nature(s). We can now see and imagine (perhaps even experience) ourselves as creatures of a special form of natural evolution. We are now at the threshold where we can ourselves design natural evolution in accordance with our own ambitions. Nature is no longer external to us: it is becoming a new stage for human explo- ration and imagination. We are free to move into a new and enormous territory of computerized and DNA-created natural habitats where only the power of imagination sets the limits. The old nature/culture division now quickly loses its power as a reminder of a past lifetime. Nature is no longer behind us as necessity. Nature is ahead of us with a horizon of new and immense possibilities.


In the book by Franklin, Lury and Stacey (2001), the new capitalist explorations into the vaguely sensed infinities of the opening of Nature as a Pandora's Box are vividly pictured. Global companies such as Benetton, Coca Cola, Body Shop, Nokia, etc., are all marked by ambitions to break grounds for nature(s) and culture(s) to meet anew. Benetton has set the stage of a new global economy and global con- sumption by releasing a series of world-wide brand pictures where races, genders and ages freely mix and interact. The legendary photography produced as Benetton branch advertising (by their famous head photographer Oliviero Toscani) has as its aim to erase the boundaries between advertising and photography. Again, as in the mixture of infotainment, boundaries are there to be transgressed, as shown in the shocking picture of a dying aids-ridden man featured in a fashion advertisement. The free and unscrupulous mix of nature and culture, staging a new (global) humanity. has led recent commentators on Benetton's marketing profile to conceive of 'the naturalness of choice' (Franklin et al., 2001: 149).

How to change your race. You mean you're not a round-eyed, blond haired, white skinned, perky nosed god or goddess? No problem. All you have to do is to undergo a few simple procedures. (from Colors no. 4, 199 3, as cited in Franklin et al., 2001: 150)

Michael Jackson clearly epitomizes this naturalness of choice'. It may well be that the

many surgical operations he has undergone have left him and his image with a slightly tragic overtone in the public media. But he is nevertheless an excellent example of that compulsory act of choice that his fortune made possible. In a very real sense, perhaps tragic, he epitomizes a culture where distinctions are chosen, and not acquired. His yearning for whiteness can be deplored as a sign of a not yet fulfilled reconcili- ation with the cultural essentialism of 'black is beautiful' - or with the natural history of mankind. But this search for whiteness can also be read as the irony of race: when also the stub- bornness of race can be made into an achieved characteristic of an individual entertainer, nature loses its grip on cultured men and women. Nature has become an option, and not destiny.

The hybridization of sex has long offered the homosexual type with a special aura. In the late 19th century the homosexual

challenged the sexual division as tertium non dator. The general trend towards homosexual- ization of late 20th centuiry, especially of metro- politan culture, threatens to render the homosexual superfluous as a cultural category (Bech, 1997). Despite the spectacular perform- ances of Mermaid Pride Carnevals in our big cities, the extraordinary cultural type once pos- sessed by the homosexual seems forever lost. Modern surgical technology offers us much more drastic choices: change your sexual nature if it is not what you want it to be.1

But the 'naturalness of choice' in the cultural identity realm seems eagerly resisted when it comes to the more natural realms of organically grown food. The possibility that foods such as tomatoes and corns may be gene- modified stirs anxiety in people and arouses a natural essentialism. This kind of public anxiety, most pronounced in the Northwest of Europe, and allegedly an economic straight- jacket for the prospering of a competitive European Union, reflects a resistance among the general public to give up wholly on the nature/culture distinction. We prefer 'natural foods', if possible grown in our home gardens. The plant genetic arguments, that there is nothing natural in our home-grown gardens and that our plants and seeds are the products of long-time breeding cultures, are curiously met by public resistance in the totalizing prospect of a gene-modified Nature.

Whether temporal or not, such public displays of resistance in the rich Northwestern European countries to the rapid scientific culturalization (culture as in gardening . . .) of our natural landscape may signify the rise of a pluralized world-view. While erosion of the nature/culture distinction now seems to be a recognized official strategy, reinforced by the strength of the 'naturalness of choice' among individuals themselves, the upholding of a strict division within our own domestic sphere offers us the privilege of a sheltered world. The 'not in our back yards' syndrome, known from other forms of technologies, may indeed serve a system-functional purpose. The nuclear family once provided us with a 'haven in a heartless world'. Although technologically manu- factured, the holiness of the family remains a strong cultural value. In the same way, the sheltered place of a 'natural world' in our immediate vicinity offers us a necessary riposte in a heartless (system) vworld where 'all that is solid melts into air'.

-1, , " O",

, I " , "V ., -, ' " -Genic 12 7 m . - .. , t11

Naturalization of the social - some sociological concerns

Fears have surfaced concerning the present onslaughts of the biotechnical sciences, which, in combination with a full-fledged support of de- constructivist social science, rapidly seem to be breaking down cherished distinctions of the past. The German sociologist Christoph Lau expresses concerns about a possible 'naturalization' of the social order as well (1999). What will happen to the 'social' when its sui generis is being questioned from all sides?

Durch fortschreitende Naturerkenntnis und Tech- nikentwicklung wurden in der modernen Gesellschaft immer mehr Anteile von Natur einbe- zogen in den Bereich des Gesellschaftlich zu Verant- wortenden. Natur wurde zur gesellschaftlich iiberformten Natur. Dabeib blieb - im Prinzip - immer eindeutig bestimmbar, wo die Grenze im jew- eiligen Fall verlief. Wie wichtig die Abgrenzung zur Natur, dies 'grosse Trennung', wie sie durch die friihere neuzeitliche Wissenschaft vorgenommen wurde, fur die geselllschaftliche Verfassung der Moderne ist, wird an folgende Beispielen deutlich. (Lau, 1999: 288)

* The distinction between nature and culture serves as a precondition for a modern conception of nature that is void of responsibility.

* Likewise the distinction enables an ongoing functional differentiation of the social order into separate action realms. Each of these realms (i.e. economy, education, science and medicine) is assigned special rationality claims, which in turn allow for further accentuation of each system (as seen in the system theory of Niklas Luhmann).

* The civilization process of modernity is made possible as a long-term consequence of the ongoing differentiation (and normalization procedures) between nature and society. The distinction between the patho- logical and the sick (nature), and the normal and the healthy (society) is constitutive not just for the modern legal system, but for health and education as well.

* Attempts to ground social inequalities on natural inequality (races, sexes) are very old. The modern education system is largely operating on the premise of distinguishing between the social causes and the natural causes of such inequalities.

* Modern legal procedure can proceed only

on the assumption that culpa can be exclaimed. If the individual is not responsible for his or her actions, legal sanctioning is impeded.2

* Also in daily life practices the distinction between nature and society is essential. It has consequences for how we deal with ageing parents, youth education and intimate affairs with a partner.

* Modern art - as modern philosophy - is largely characterized by the freedom to conceive of and compose nature esoterically (as seen in the case of Picasso).

The distinctions outlined by Lau character- ize what we could call 'advanced modernity'. Clearly, a trafficking zone between culture and nature is located in the regulatory practices of the professional complex (Parsons, 1966). The progress of bioscience enables us to make further interventions into our bodily disposi- tions, but it also destabilizes the social system of professional ethics once regulating such interventions. The French woman depicted at the outset of this article awoke public media consternation primarily because of her age (62 years old). It is not 'natural' to give birth at that age. Similarly, our elderly parents have deserved their otium and can withdraw from public life. Lau's concerns are in addressing the problems of what will happen to all these normal practices of everyday and professional life: will we as individuals be held responsible for not taking proper action to prevent 'natural' decay?

Collectively agreed upon institutional practices by various professions (doctors, jurists, therapists, etc.) have seconded nature, and thus also us, in interpreting the signs of nature. It is good to know that a person is dead, and that there is nothing more to be done. The destabilization of 'natural' (the heart beat) some years ago led to concerns among lay people. Dissoci- ated from the evident signs of a dead body, we became increasingly dependent upon technologically mediated signs, and hence on the decisions of others. The possible immortality of the body-dividual in today's medical practice presents the individual, and the professional body too, with difficult choices: is there not another possibility or another opinion?

The rapid implosion of nature as a stabilizing ground for normal practices throws more and more responsibility on the 'ethics of individual choice' (Rose, 1999; Novas and Rose, 2000). At the same time, Rose convincingly

128 ACTA SOCLOLOGICA 46(2)

argues, the notions of individual and of person- hood seem to be going through significant change. As we become more and more aware of our bodies and possible genetic profiles, our relations with our consociates, families and friends are affected as well. The knowledge that a person is in the risk zone for carrying a certain genetic defect, such as hereditary breast cancer or Huntington's disease, puts a whole new set of responsibilities upon the individual. While these are related to the personal ego-sphere they are also related to family concerns: how many blood siblings, children, cousins, etc., are to be informed about a possible hereditary gene? In modern liberal society, the right language is prolific, offering all a 'right to know', especially when our bodies are at risk. Whether or not there is also a 'right not to know' is much more problematic. A decision to disentangle oneself from the 'community of knowers and observers' may have repercussions. In the future, employ- ment and insurance procedures may demand of individuals that they show their genetic profile.

Novas and Rose (2000) suggest that new 'knowledge regimes' are emerging in the bio- world, but that these regimes are no longer steered from above, by tyranny experts, but increasingly by concerned and knowledgeable individuals taking an increasing interest in their genetic disposition. The profile of a future knowledge society is not at all like the top-down system regimes of the past, but is the result of a myriad of 'lay experts' seeking out options and possibilities via the world-wide web, where 'bio- communities' are being formed. Novas and Rose make use of the network society of a 'flattened world' as a characterization of these new self- responsible actor networks profoundly engaged in fostering 'folk science'. It is also in this regard that the new actors are labelled 'scientific citizens' (Elam and Bertilsson, 2002).

A critical sociologist could then ask: Is this not a world worth striving for? A world governed by individual actors in close association with the forefront of science? A world where citizens have become the members of a scientific republic, no longer regimented from the top but from the vivid energy flows of engaged actors!

Biosocial causation and its effects

As sociologists, we should be aware of a gradual paradigm shift regarding causation and agency likely to result from the staggering advances of

the new biosciences. The old conflict of hereditary versus environment is again being revitalized. However, the revitalized conflict demands that the purity claims of either environment or hereditary be reconsidered. Social scientists, and perhaps especially sociologists, have developed a reflex reaction to any attempt to explain individual and social behaviour by states of inner causation (Barnes, 2000). The idea that there could be a gene of criminal behaviour or alcoholism strikes us as repulsive. When explain- ing social behaviour, we sociologists either advocate some form of 'voluntarism', as this allows an individual to exercise moral agency, or we side with Durkheim and accept some form of social, external causation. External causation allows the sociologist to lay the responsibility of social ills upon structural deficits in society. The 'inner causation' model typical of the new bioscience presents us with a model of the actor where the causes of behaviour are to some extent biological. But the new causation chains are not at all linear, but highly complex, demanding the consideration of a reciprocal interaction of both internal and external causes. In this new bio- world of ours, there is as much uncertainty as there is certainty. Novas and Rose suggest the term 'somatic individuality' in an effort to spell out a new complex model of intertwined causation and agency. Genetic risk individuals, where all of us to different degrees belong, are increasingly cognizant of their bio-bodies, of hormonal states and hereditary gene disposition in locating the sources of their own (overt) behaviours: their bodily state alerts them and becomes at the same time an important mark of identity. The actor is now entrusted with a wholly new form of responsibility in observing and acting upon bodily signs.

Furthermore, genetic diagnoses allow for the possibility of discovering a whole new array of individual differences having diverse consequences for social, collective action. It is not unlikely that in the future the advance of the biosciences will identify possible genetic disposi- tions of forms of social behaviour. In fact, identification of 'inner hormonal states' is rapidly advancing in the bioscientific world (Barnes. 2000: 103-21). Hyperactive children in the US are treated with Prozac in order to become 'socialized' (Fukuyama, 2002: 41-56). We need not be ardent anti-feminists in order to observe the recurrent gender patterns in criminal statistics: males are as a rule more aggressive than females. To account for such


behaviour patterns exclusively in terms of social roles or of cultural enactments seems a little primitive at a time when it is possible to measure hormonal differences affecting human behaviour (Barnes, 2000). For many years now, menstruating and post-menstruating women, on a mass scale, are controlling their biological rhythms with hormonal pills. The advance of biotechnology is likely to result in the invention of new diagnostic tests, many of which are administered by individuals themselves as bodily micro-chips. The consequence as far as social life is concerned, Novas and Rose suggest, is the proliferation of biosocial communities of 'observers and consumers' of knowledge and knowledge-related affairs.

As shown by the American Diabetes Association today, these new bio-communities are not restricted by territorial state borders. In fact, their intense engagement in the furthering of science and technology for the sake of finding a cure can in fact develop as an impediment to liberal democracy and the rules of representation. Biosocial communities are constituted in their difference from other (biosocial) communities, and this difference constitutes at the same time a strong source of identity. In the 1980s, the aids communities in the US and in Western Europe set the agenda for strong political and scientific interventions. The suffering of the new bio-communities is not primarily caused by 'social ill', but the collective recognition of a common destiny can develop into a powerful social action platform. Naturally different from other members of the same political territory, the new bio-communities are endowed with special rights - to find a cure regardless of cost. The price that the political community pays for bioscientific progress is perhaps a weakening of liberal democracy and its rules of elective representation. In a political community, citizens have equal human worth, but such (constructed) equality can easily erode in the face of an all-mighty Bio-Power.

When nature loses its power to set the boundary conditions of the 'human condition' (ageing, dying, frailty), there is a real problem for the conditions of collective rationality, i.e. the upholding of stabilizing social systems. The implosion of nature, and the consequent social- ization of nature (as in need of more and more legitimization) may have the possible counter- effect that also society, such as we know it up to now, is imploding from the inside. The implosion of the social world is an effect of the increasing

problems translating the ethics of individual choice into legitimate system rationalities. The case of the French woman serves as an excellent illustration of this dilemma. As an individual act, it was met with consternation - but when universalized as collective action, the consequences are difficult even to apprehend.

Concluding remarks: the social world in need of new boundary conditions

A milestone of the sociology of modernity, in its classical versions, resided in the evolution of the professional complex as governing the logic of collective practices. The logic of professional practices served as belts of transmission between individual and collective life. The medical profession gained power to define human life and declare the conditions of life and death. The legal profession, likewise, gained power to declare the conditions of damage present in a case in order to find a balanced resti- tution squaring with other similar cases. Pro- fessional procedures have - pace Foucault and Latour - served as stabilizing conditions in defining system demands as distinct from individual demands, i.e. in articulating and legiti- mating social system claims as separate from those of individuals. Professional practices and judgements can, in principle, be subjected to accountability procedures, while such procedures are not possible with regard to individual choice. The strengthening of collective logic as a result of increasing system operations (professional demands) has had a major impact on the evolution of social life as known up to now. When an individual is declared to be sick, she is at the same time freed from the burden of work and may gain insurance compensation; when we reach old age and a set pension date, we can receive our pension allowance and continue with our daily life; when an individual is declared guilty of a crime, he or she can expect a sentence of a certain duration.

Citizen rights are made possible in the light of the existence of these 'normal procedures': an individual has a right of compensation when he or she has reached a certain collectively agreed upon age, when a claim is recognized, when sickness prevails. The institutionalization of civil, political and increasingly also social rights is preconditioned on the existence of there being such 'normal procedures' which bureaucratically take care of sensitive human


selection processes. It is therefore possible for individuals to claim that their case has not been treated fairly. Fair procedures are for that matter only possible in the light of agreed upon 'normal practices', eventually grounded in the 'veil of ignorance' (Rawls, 1971).

These bureaucratic practices, well known since Weber and constitutive for the crystalliza- tion of system demands as distinct from individual practices, have enabled the growth of a social economy of modern advanced societies. These system demands serve as the background conditions for what Latour calls The Constitution of Modernity. 'Normative' collective practices serve as stabilizing conditions of the Great Divide separating society from nature. The vital question raised by Lau in response to the present biotechnological implosion of nature (seconded by many modern social science studies) is whether also the normalization procedures of the professional complex are at risk of imploding from within. The implosion of nature, then, is at the same time an implosion of the social order (as collective rationality), because the stabilizing conditions that ensured the division between nature and society are no longer in operation. When 'normal procedures' are no longer in operation, or in the process of searching for new definition of boundary conditions, the socializa- tion of nature, i.e. its increasing 'constructive- ness', may at the same time lead to a naturalization of the social world. The long- term consequence of such naturalization processes of the social world is that it becomes increasingly difficult to hold the 'social' responsible for collective action. If the social is void of collective rationality (in terms of accountability procedures), it is by the same token difficult to exercise collective responsibility. In a nutshell, it may be difficult to raise Crimes against Humanity in a future where the logic of individual choice and individual practice is replacing the logic of collective action.

In this complex of increasing de-stabilization of nature and the overburdening of 'the naturalness of choice' as a vehicle of culture/nature lies the real tension, as I now see it, between various post-modern and modern endeavours in social theory of today. But instead of viewing these tensions as purely theoretical and ideational confrontations, it is much more fruitful to view them in the light of a possible reshaping and re-arranging of collective structural demands. The destabilization of modern nature goes hand in hand with the de-

stabilization of the unity of the modern state and its political and professional complex. Lacking agreed upon global (normalization) procedures, wild science has become a real problem. The spectrum of human cloning now haunts the modern world order. Latour's 'third power', the replaced gods, is lurking behind the scene sooner than he himself could perhaps have imagined.

The Great Divide of the last couple of centuries is rapidly being undermined by science and by the normal practices of 'the naturalness of choice'. The micro-world of individual action is hailed as against the old stabilizing forces of the system, once residing in the professional complex. As a consequence, the professional complex is itself undergoing massive change. One current resides in the simultaneous globalization/individualization of the old state professions, at least in Europe. The French woman could get what she wanted in California, well outside French jurisdiction. When Presi- dent Bush, for religious or whatever reasons, bans stem cell research, the American Diabetes Association diverts huge support to Swedish research. The new bio-communities recognize no territorial jurisdiction.

One of the central questions of social theory in the bio-technical era seems to me to reside in the search for new boundary conditions stabilizing individual choice with new system imperatives grounded in procedures that are open to public accountability. Ethical council is rapidly replacing what were once the foci of the social sciences: to help guide individuals through a world of new options. It lies in the nature of ethics to be concerned with practical action of the here and now. It is the burden of the social sciences, and notably sociology, to seek to transcend the immediate present and look for the long-term societal consequences of the 'naturalness of individual choice' now haunting us all. Whether we like it or not, human evolution is no longer simply a naturally unfolding process but a conscious human project administered by 'reflexive' individuals in search of their own life improvement.

Acknowledgements This article was first read at the 5th ESA Congress, Helsinki (29 August to 1 September 2001) in RN Social Theory, Session 2 (New Philosophies of Social Science). Later I presented it during a Department Colloquium, Sociology, University of Copenhagen, and at the Winter Seminar, Norwegian Sociology Association, 4-6 January 2002. I thank all colleagues who commented on the text.


Notes 1. The well-known economist Donald McCloskey shocked his

academic community a few years ago when he openly declared via his/her homepage that he had changed his 'nature' and emerged as Deirdre. Painful as these surgical operations must be, their undertakings nevertheless reflect modern culture's compulsion of 'the naturalness of choice'.

2. A classic example in French law is the case of 'crime passionelle'. Assurance laws have also modernized the old culpa.

References Barnes, B. (2000) Understanding Agency, Social Theory and

Responsible Action. London: Sage. Bech, H. (1997) When Men Meet. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bertilsson, M. (1984) 'Om avgorandet: Notat om Krist och

Antikrist i sociologin', Sociologisk Forskning 21: 33-58. Bertilsson, M. (2002) 'Disorganised Knowledge or New Forms of

Governance', Science Studies. An Interdisciplinary Journal for Science and Technology Studies 15: 3-16.

Callon, M. (1999) 'The Role of Lay People in the Production and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge', Science, Technology and Society 4: 81-94.

Elam, M. and Bertilsson, M. (2002) 'Consuming, Engaging and Confronting Science: The Emerging Dimensions of Scientific Citizenship.' Discussion Paper One, STAGE (Science, Tech- nology and Governance in Europe). Copenhagen: Stage (forthcoming in European Journal of Social Theory).

Fukuyama, F. (2002) Our Posthuman Future. London: Profile Books.

Franklin, S., Lury, C. and Stacey, J. (2001) Global Nature, Global Culture. London: Sage.

Horowitz, I. L. (1993) The Decomposition of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kelsen, H. (1943) Society and Nature: A Sociological Inquiry. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Koch, L. (2002) 'Den islandske sundhedsdatabase: etisk eller uetisk?', Danske bioanalytikere 2: 8-12

Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. New York: Har- vester Wheatsheaf.

Lau, C. (1999) 'Vergesellschaftung oder Naturalisierung - Grenzkonflikte zwischen Natur und Gesellschaft'. Grenzenlose Gesellschaft? Verhandlungen des 29. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Soziologie. Opladen: Laske & Budrich (288-304).

Novas, C. and Rose, N. (2000) 'Genetic Risk and the Birth of the Somatic Individual', Economy and Society 29: 485-513.

Osterberg, D. (1988) Metasociology. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Parsons, T. (1966) Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Per-

spectives. New York: Prentice Hall. Rawls, J. (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap

Press of Harvard University. Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press. Ross, A. (19 54) 'Et retssociologisk forsog', Tidskrift for retsviden-

skab, pp. 358-75. Seidman, S. (2001) 'Modern and Postmodern Themes in

American Sexual Politics', in M. Carleheden and M. Jacobsen (eds) The Transformation of Modernity, pp. 119-30. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Shapin, S. (1995) 'Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge', Annual Review of Sociology 21: 289-32 1.

Smith, D. (2001) Norbert Elias and Modern Social Theory. London: Sage.

Snow, C. P. (1959) 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revol- ution.' The Rede Lecture.

Sousa Santos, B. (1995) Toward a New Common Sense: Law, Science and Politics in Paradigmatic Transition. New York and London: Routledge.

Urry, J. (2001) 'Mobility and Global Complexity', Public Lecture, Copenhagen University, 24 April.

Weber, M. (1968) Economy and Society, vol. 2, ch. VIII, pp. 641-901. (Economy and Law). Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Thora Margareta Bertilsson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests are social thoery, sociology of knowledge, law and professions. Her most recent publications include 'Consuming, Engaging and Confronting Science: The Emerging Dimensions of Scientific Citizenship' (with Mark Elam), European Journal of Social Theory (2003: 2); 'Disorganized Science or New Forms of Governance', Science Studies (2002: 2); 'Professions on the Road to Global Power: The Case of the Legal Profession', in Mikael Carleheden and Michael Hviid Jacobsen The Transformation of Modernity: Aspects of the Past, Present and Future of an Era (Ashgate, 2001). Address: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Linnesgade 19, DK-1361 Copenhagen, Denmark. [email: [email protected]]

Documents

Bertilsson - The Social as Trans-Genic on Bio-Power and Its Implications for the Social