Saturday, March 24, 2012  The Limitations of Behavioral
Biopolitical Science (2)                 Friday, March 23, 2012
The Limitations of Behavioral Biopolitical Science  Last year,
the University of Chicago Press published Man Is by Nature a
Political Animal: Evolution, Biology, and Politics, edited by
Peter Hatemi and Rose McDermott.  This is a collection of papers
by some of the leading political scientists in biopolitical
research.  The book is designed to persuade other political
scientists to adopt the ideas and methods of biopolitics in
their research.  It illustrates how the study of political
behavior might be illuminated by evolutionary theory,
primatology, genetics, psychophysiology, endocrinology, and
neuroscience.  What one sees here is what I call behavioral
biopolitical science.  The unstated presupposition underlying
almost all the research in this book is the behavioralist view
of political science.  Behavioralists assume that the only way
to scientifically study politics is through buildin