 Undoing Insularity: A Small Study of Gender Sociology’s Big ProblemEcon Journal Watch, 2016, vol. 13, issue 3, 452–466 Abstract: In my experience as a sociologist, I see many ways in which gender sociology tends to insulate itself from challenges to its own sacred beliefs and sacred causes. The sacred beliefs are to the effect that the biological differences between the sexes are minor and that the cultural differences between the genders have little basis in biological differences. The scholarly findings that challenge the sacred beliefs come from anthropology, developmental psychology, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, genetics, biology, and many other fields. For many decades now researchers have amassed findings of differences in competitiveness, aggression, sexual interest, risk behavior, and many other traits, and differences in brain physiology and neuroimaging, by many different methods and approaches. I investigated a sample of top cited gender sociology papers to test my impression, and indeed the findings illustrate extreme insularity. It saddens me to see students and scholars fall into insular communities of highly dubious sacred beliefs and causes. I propose that gender sociologists strive to undo insularity. Keywords: Sex differences; doing gender; Steven Pinker; blank slate (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ejw:journl:v:13:y:2016:i:3:p:452-466 Access Statistics for this article Econ Journal Watch is currently edited by Daniel Klein More articles in Econ Journal Watch from Econ Journal Watch Contact information at EDIRC. |
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