4 - The nature/culture wars

Summary

The anthropological stress on the fact that humans live within a culturally and therefore historically constructed world was justified by the rhetorical trick of continually reiterating the refutation of the errors of early evolutionists. The constructivist claim then appears as the child of the old controversy but, left at that, it also automatically raises difficult problems, both theoretical and methodological. These problems have been pointed out, sometimes very emphatically, most often by researchers with a natural science background. This fact has meant that the criticisms of the culturalist turn have themselves been caught just as much within a nature/culture dichotomy.

The theoretical problem of the culturalists has recently been reformulated in a particularly clear way by the psychologist Steven Pinker as it relates to the mind (Pinker 2002). He convincingly argues that if we live in completely historically or culturally constructed worlds, this would mean that these would vary totally from culture to culture. Strange implications of such a position would then inevitably follow. First of all, it would be impossible to say anything general about the human mind and so psychology as a unified science, in spite of its apparent advances, would actually be a waste of time. Secondly, it would mean that humans are totally and absolutely different from other living species because, according to such a theory, humans are born without any cognitive predispositions. If they were, then the idea of total cultural construction would have to be severely qualified since the mind would be constrained by these predispositions.