During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, natural and
social scientists began comparing certain insects to human social
organization. Entomologists theorized that social insects -- such
as ants, bees, wasps, and termites -- organize themselves into
highly specialized, hierarchical divisions of labor. Using a
distinctly human vocabulary that reflected the dominant social
structure of the time, they described insects as queens, workers,
and soldiers and categorized their behaviors with words like
marriage, slavery, farming, and factories. At the same time,
sociologists working to develop a model for human organization
compared people to insects, relying on the same premise that humans
arrange themselves hierarchically. In Debugging the Link between
Social Theory and Social Insects, Diane M. Rodgers explains how
these co-constructed theories reinforced one another, thereby
naturalizing Western conceptions of race, class, and gender as they
gained prominence in popular culture and the scientific world.
Using a critical science studies perspective not previously
applied to research on social insect symbolism, Rodgers attempts to
"debug" this theoretical co-construction. She provides sufficient
background information to accommodate readers unfamiliar with
entomology -- including in-depth explanations of the terms used in
the research and discussion of social insects, particularly the
insect sociality scale. The entire premise of sociality for insects
depends on a dominant understanding of high/low civilization
standards -- particularly the tenets of a specialized division of
labor and hierarchy -- comparisons that appear to be informed by
nineteenth-century colonial thought. Placing these theories in a
historical and cross-cultural context, Rodgers explains why
hierarchical ideas gained prominence, despite the existence of
opposing theories in the literature, and how they resulted in an
inhibiting vocabulary that relies more heavily on metaphors than on
description.
Such analysis is necessary, Rodgers argues, because it sheds
light both on newly proposed scientific models and on future
changes in human social structures. Contemporary scientists have
begun to challenge the traditional understanding of insect social
organization and to propose new interdisciplinary models that
combine ideas about social insect and human organizational
structure with computer technologies. Without a thorough
understanding of how the old models came about, residual language
and embedded assumptions may remain and continue to reinforce
hierarchical social constructions.
This intriguing interdisciplinary book makes an important
contribution to the history -- and future -- of science and
sociology.
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