What's Normal?: Reconciling Biology and Culture

by Allan V. Horwitz

Since the emergence of Western philosophy and science among the classical Greeks, debates have raged over the relative significance of biology and culture on an individual's behavior. Today, recent advances in genetics and biological science have pushed most scholars past the tired nature vs. nurture debate to examine the ways in which the natural and the social interact to influence human behavior.

In What's Normal? , Allan Horwitz brings a fresh approach to this emerging perspective. Rather than try to solve these issues universally, Horwitz demonstrates that both social and biological mechanisms have varying degrees of influence in different situations. Through case studies of human universals such as incest aversion, fear, appetite, grief, and sex, Horwitz first discusses the extreme instances where biology determines behavior, where culture dominates, and where culture overrides basic biological instincts. He then details the variety of ways in which genes and environments interact; for instance, the primal drive to eat and store calories when food supplies were scarce creates serious problems in a society where food is abundant and obesity stigmatized.

Now that it's often easier to change our biology rather than our culture, an understanding of which behaviors and traits are simply normal or abnormal, and which are pathological or necessitate treatment is more important than ever. Wide-ranging and accessible, What's Normal? provides a crucial guide to the biological and social bases of human behavior at the heart of these matters.

Genres: Psychology

288 pages, Hardcover

Published September 26, 2016

Reviews

[Hannah Wolpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting to find this relatively unknown book as comprehensive and intriguing as I did. Drawing on as diverse examples as incest aversion and obesity, Horwitz provides a thorough account of the myriad ways in which our nature/biology interacts, conflicts or coincides with our environment/culture. I was constantly astounded at the amount of detail this book went into with its descriptions and analyses, and have finished it feeling profoundly more knowledgeable than I did going into it.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked how the topics of chapters were balanced. I've found content from this book to be surprisingly useful in conversations... When the topic of normal or neurodiverse comes up... It's a wonderful resource to draw upon.

[Henrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 5 out of 5]

The current human genome developed in a time period ranging until about 10000 years ago, when humans were all hunter-gatherers. From then onwards, human development is mostly determined by cultural evolution.
These two developments may clash in today's society or they may reinforce each other. This book shows a number of examples in which our evolutionary makeup matches current cultural norms (e.g. Incest) or where the two mismatch (e.g. Courage, Obesity). In other cases, natural selection has no influence on cultural aspects of human behaviour(e.g. Names).
This book explores the touchpoints between biological and cultural development in broad and thorough ways. Here and there repetitive, then again somewhat dry, it is a good read. Culture is often interpreted as US/European culture, ignoring the rest of the world. Future editions should fix a handful of typos in the text.
Recommended for all fans of evolutionary psychology and post-modernists!