Stardust and feminism: A creatureliness agenda

People are living, breathing creatures. Dominant feminist discourses are situated within hegemonic human exceptionalism (HHE) which, by framing the body in terms of human forms of meaning-making and social life, eschews first-order embodiment (or creatureliness) as worthy of inquiry. Here, well-known reasons for avoidance of “the biological” are briefly summarized and an argument is advanced for meta-theoretical centering of creatureliness. A three-pronged agenda is proposed that embraces the creaturely body without the “-isms” (e.g., essentialism) and “-izings” (e.g., so-called “naturalizing”) that subvert feminist commitments. By unsettling HHE, executing the agenda would promote broader feminist coalitions and new scholarly collaborations aimed at fleshing out gender.

VII. Moving toward integrative feminist evolutionary behavioral sciences

There is a long history of mostly antagonist interactions between feminist and evolutionary scholarship in the behavioral sciences. However, recent theoretical and empirical advances have highlighted that “nature” and “nurture” are not mutually exclusive, or even divorceable, levels of explanation. New developments in evolutionary theory, articulated under the name of “the extended synthesis,” show significant promise for integrating feminist and evolutionary approaches to the study of human behavior. The extended synthesis provides feminist inquiry and research an expanded ground on which to enter the conversation, such as with the inclusion of “fast” evolution – the idea that genetic and epigenetic (environmentally influenced gene expression) traits can change within a generation – which demonstrates that there has in fact been evolutionary time to (adaptively) alter behavior and physiology. This integration has the potential to lead to new research paradigms that bridge the old divide between “nature” and “nurture”, resulting in transdisciplinary frameworks that show the interaction effects between each. Feminism and feminist psychology will be more complete descriptors and analyzers of human behavior in this model, and crucial interaction effects historically ignored by both the sciences and humanities may now receive due consideration.

Personality and gender differences in global perspective

Men's and women's personalities appear to differ in several respects. Social role theories of development assume gender differences result primarily from perceived gender roles, gender socialization and sociostructural power differentials. As a consequence, social role theorists expect gender differences in personality to be smaller in cultures with more gender egalitarianism. Several large cross-cultural studies have generated sufficient data for evaluating these global personality predictions. Empirically, evidence suggests gender differences in most aspects of personality-Big Five traits, Dark Triad traits, self-esteem, subjective well-being, depression and values-are conspicuously larger in cultures with more egalitarian gender roles, gender socialization and sociopolitical gender equity. Similar patterns are evident when examining objectively measured attributes such as tested cognitive abilities and physical traits such as height and blood pressure. Social role theory appears inadequate for explaining some of the observed cultural variations in men's and women's personalities. Evolutionary theories regarding ecologically-evoked gender differences are described that may prove more useful in explaining global variation in human personality.

Epigenetic Determinism in Science and Society

The epigenetic "revolution" in science cuts across many disciplines, and it is now one of the fastest growing research areas in biology. Increasingly, claims are made that epigenetics research represents a move away from the genetic determinism that has been prominent both in biological research and in understandings of the impact of biology on society. We discuss to what extent an epigenetic framework actually supports these claims. We show that, in contrast to the received view, epigenetics research is often couched in language as deterministic as genetics research in both science and the popular press. We engage the rapidly emerging conversation about the impact of epigenetics on public discourse and scientific practice, and we contend that the notion of epigenetic determinism - or the belief that epigenetic mechanisms determine the expression of human traits and behaviors - matters for understandings of the influence of biology and society on population health.

The Mattering Map

This article describes and elaborates upon the theoretical model of the Mattering Map, initially introduced in Engendered Lives: A New Psychology of Women’s Experience (Kaschak, 1992). This model organizes the principles of contextual feminist theory and practice in a manner that honors the complexity, multiplicity, and morphing of the energetic field of mattering. The mattering map is more intimately related to 21st century physics, neuroscience, and constructionist thought than to the reductionist and fragmenting epistemological models of the 19th and 20th centuries.