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

Author(s): Thora Margareta Bertilsson

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Acta Sociologica, Vol. 46, No. 2, The Knowledge Society (Jun., 2003), pp. 118-131
Published 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 of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Acta
Sociologica.
http://www.jstor.org
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 socio-
logical 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 prac-
tices 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' pro-
cesses 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 biotechnol-
ogy 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 bio-
logical 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 col-
lectively 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 dis-
course, where the idea of a free will and free
consent is a precondition for the further exploi-
tation 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 soci-
ology) 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 corol-
lary 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 posi-
tivity 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 separ-
ation 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 prac-
tices, 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 direc-
tions 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 increas-
ingly 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 auton-
omous power; equally it is questioning the realm
of a social order existing as separate and auton-
omous 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 corol-
lary 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 exist-
ence sui generis, but is merely an artefact that
helped secure the Great Division and its corol-
lary of asymmetric claims. No doubt the conse-
quences 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 popu-
larity of the new sociology of science, tech-
nology 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 band-
wagon, 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
122 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 46(2)
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) prac-
tices. 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 inter-
national law. But such practices are now inter-
vening 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 deconstruc-
tion 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 assem-
blage 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 communi-
cative 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 conse-
quences for traditional state monopolies.
Patient organizations need not, as in the case
with the diabetes association above, honour
national state laws (Callon. 1999).
Bertilsson: The Social as Trans-Genic 123
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-indi-
viduals, they turn to the study of new configur-
ations 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 collec-
tive 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 con-
sociates 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 possi-
bilities 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 pre-
sented. 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 depict-
ing 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 exist-
ence 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 govern-
ing 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.
124 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 46(2)
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 gradu-
ally 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 clas-
sificatory 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 labora-
tory 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 concep-
tion 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
Bertilsson: The Social as Trans-Genic 125
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 pro-
fessor 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 socio-
logy and law, captured by Alf Ross, remains
alive to this date, as the two disciplines stand on
the two antagonistic poles of a continuum pre-
serving 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 bio-
science 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.
126 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 46(2)
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 ambi-
tions 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 photog-
raphy 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 never-
theless 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 shel-
tered place of a 'natural world' in our immedi-
ate 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 'naturaliza-
tion' 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 con-
ception of nature that is void of responsi-
bility.
* 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 normal-
ization procedures) between nature and
society. The distinction between the patho-
logical and the sick (nature), and the
normal and the healthy (society) is consti-
tutive 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 respons-
ible 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 inter-
ventions. The French woman depicted at the
outset of this article awoke public media con-
sternation 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 indi-
viduals be held responsible for not taking proper
action to prevent 'natural' decay?
Collectively agreed upon institutional prac-
tices 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 destabiliz-
ation 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 techno-
logically 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 stabiliz-
ing ground for normal practices throws more
and more responsibility on the 'ethics of indi-
vidual 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 know-
ledge 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 heredi-
tary versus environment is again being re-
vitalized. However, the revitalized conflict
demands that the purity claims of either environ-
ment 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 causa-
tion and agency. Genetic risk individuals, where
all of us to different degrees belong, are increas-
ingly 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 conse-
quences 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
Bertilsson: The Social as Trans-Genic 129
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 behav-
iour (Barnes, 2000). For many years now, men-
struating 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 represen-
tation. Biosocial communities are constituted in
their difference from other (biosocial) communi-
ties, 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 conse-
quences 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 indi-
vidual 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 pro-
cedures are not possible with regard to indi-
vidual 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
130 ACTA SOCIOLOGICA 46(2)
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 indi-
vidual 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 pro-
cesses of the social world is that it becomes
increasingly difficult to hold the 'social' respons-
ible 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 indi-
vidual choice and individual practice is replac-
ing the logic of collective action.
In this complex of increasing de-stabiliza-
tion 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 cen-
turies 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 con-
ditions 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.
Bertilsson: The Social as Trans-Genic 131
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: Margareta.Bertilsson@sociology.ku.dk]