Keywords

At the planning stage for this book, we were involved in discussions about how to divide up and allocate the relevant chapters and responses. I saw early on that Suzanne Egan’s work addressed, in a concrete and applied way, topics that I had been worrying about in a slightly unfocused way for some time. Both of us had been impressed by Rose and Abi-Rached’s 2013 book Neuro. For me, this book related to a larger project to enter into a critical but friendly dialogue with neurological understandings of humans and their behaviours (Hansson & Lindh, 2018).

For Egan, the book represents a way to think through how the field of trauma studies and trauma-informed practical interventions had evolved in tandem with an incorporation of neurological discourses about the brain. Over and above that, it was also a demonstration of the arc of Nikolas Rose’s body of work showing the usefulness of Foucauldian methods to analyse power/knowledge in the institutionalisation of discursive positions, bodies of expertise, and technologies of the self. Neuroscience applications could be seen as a paradigmatic case of the uses of science into social problems. As these processes consolidate, it becomes easier to see how this might relate to the management of people and potentially to the shaping of the social order.

In productive discussions with Egan, I gained insight from her account of travelling alongside an evolving theory/field whilst developing one’s thinking. I could not claim such an organic sense of interweaving, but I do have some parallels in my own journey within my chosen sub-discipline of the sociology of education.

Before going on to discuss aspects of possible overlaps, I would like to say a few things about my formation as a teacher and the scope of sociology at least as I initially learned it. I began reading sociology seriously as an undergraduate in the UK in the 1970s. This was an era in which sociology, and the sub-discipline of sociology of education, was in an expansionist and confident moment. Some of the fuel for this was a newfound engagement with Marxism and reproduction theory (Apple, 1978; Young, 1972). This seemed to contain the promise of an increased relevance, particularly on issues such as the maintenance of social class trajectories and overcoming barriers to social justice. When we were not lost in reading Lacan and Althusser, we were inviting Bowles and Gintis (1976) to come and tell us how modern schooling was also (essentially?) the preparation of workers for Capitalism. Though this seems as passe as schools of thought like symbolic interactionism, its social justice legacy potentially remains relevant.

There are two further points that were evident even from my initial liking for sociological theorising. Firstly, there was the fact that, despite sociology’s ever-expanding ‘remit’, not everything could be explained using only a sociological lens. A theory of the internal (more usually the realm of psychology) was necessary as well. Otherwise, one could end up with an ‘oversocialised’ model of humankind as author Dennis Wrong (1963, 1999 [1967]) argued decades ago in his much-quoted article.

The second limitation or correction was to do with striking a balance between materialism and idealism. This was particularly pertinent to Marxist theorising, after all, historical materialism was supposed to keep these two -isms in some dialectical relation. Even if one did not buy into debates about (economic) ‘base’ and (cultural) ‘superstructure’, it was important to think about how material conditions affect social developments and the prominence and promulgation of dominant ideas. Italian theorist Timpanaro (1975), writing somewhat polemically, was surely right also when he urged social theorists to recall that materiality matters. If you wait long enough, old fashions become new again. So-called New Materialism (Barad, 2007. Coole & Frost, 2010) is somewhat in vogue, for example. It looks promising, although it is not without its own elements of mystification and poetic excesses (matter being seen as animate and so on). Coming right up to date, some of this vexed issue of mind and matter is recast in debates about the brain and the mind. A theory that considers ideas or motivations only in a free-floating sense is ill-equipped to have serious conversations about the functioning of the brain and its neurotransmitters. This is certainly part of the contested terrain that Rose and Abi-Rached’s work relates to.

Even so I am reminded that the growth of understanding is not as linear as a retrospectively arranged narrative would make it appear. In terms of my formative engagement with research and theorising, there are two other developments that are worth recalling, though I will not have space to do them much justice. The first was feminism—the so-called second wave of which unleashed a huge amount of pent-up energy and accounts from often denied realities (Bland et al., 2013, [1978]). This not only produced new theorising but also sloughed off so much of the deadened or narrow previous paradigms. Its work of rewriting the canon is a continuing legacy. We sometimes forget how inventive and innovative feminist research was (and continues to be). It is dangerous to romanticise a bygone ‘golden age’, but there was an enormous energy released as many paradigms were adjusted or shaken up.

The other important development was being in on the formation of a cultural studies approach as that more eclectic framework branched off from mainstream sociology and media studies (for an interesting retrospective view of this largely in the British context, see Morley & Chen, 1996). Again, space prevents a fuller account of how that felt. Having worked with some of the key scholars in the UK at that time, my attachment to this development is tinged with the personal. There was great excitement in opening up new avenues of inquiry and addressing subjects that were now legitimate areas of investigation for this new, inherently multi-disciplinary theorising.

To come back to the main thread, the subject of this response is essentially about how a more ‘neurological’ view of people might affect the theorisation of people and their agency. This involves a complex nexus of possible relations and avenues of inquiry. It also relates, not entirely tangentially, to how ‘necessary’ it is to adopt some frameworks or theories in order to take positions on practical social issues. This relates to the idea of deciding what topics ‘need’ what kind of theory. I am tempted to adapt an idea from the anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1975) when he talks about experience near (immediate relations) and experience far (more abstract categories or guiding principles). Maybe we can think of something like theory near and far. In teaching sociology of education, for example, I need a theory of why neoliberalism, and its marketisation of parental school choice, has affected the educational landscape and the distribution of life chances in Australia. This involves a range of theories or perspectives that I might need to have at hand a lot of the time when I research and teach. It is a set of theories that I trade in continuously. Then there are relations or problems that I would only come across very occasionally and for which I do not have a ready-made bank of explanations or readings in my head. These problems might be very interesting and important to read into when I do come to them, but they do not come up for me that frequently. The problem of how to theorise the place of neurological understandings of brain and personality and agency might be in that second category, but I am drawn to it nonetheless.

Again, in the light of the above, there are two ways that I am brought to neurological debates. The first is fuelled mostly by sheer curiosity. Most new developments are inherently interesting to social scientists. This is also an extension of my feeling that I need to think about motivation and agency in a holistic way. Minds are also (partly) brains and we cannot have one without the other (see comments below on dualism). Perhaps as Gregory Bateson (2000) argued some time back, we need to build steps to an ‘ecological’ view of minds which does not reduce to either crude materialism or untethered idealism.

My own practice as a sociologist and a teacher educator comes from a slightly different space. As implied, I do not have a clear and obvious way of arguing that the consolidation of ‘neuro’-influenced practices affects my own work as an educator—although one could imagine this changing in the future. Yet I have been aware of neurobiological views out of the corner of my eye for some time and have collected readings around the topic in a bowerbird kind of way. I have been a sociologist for about three decades. Below I make a few remarks about proceeding/developing as a sociologist and the issue of trying to read into sub-disciplines that are ‘next door’. I briefly address the dilemma of balancing sociology and other frameworks before considering further particular readings of ‘neuro debates’.

Neuroscience and Progressive Agendas for Educationalists

I would now like to turn to issues around the area of neuroscience and agency. There is great complexity here (to which I admit I cannot do justice). The link in my mind is to do with thinking through what really ‘governs’ our choices and beliefs. It also fits with some reading I had been doing on education and the agentic nature of the sovereign self. Of course, there is nothing that is new here. This had been a concern in philosophy (e.g., age-old disputes about free will and determinism) and it has its correlates in sociology (ideology and (false) consciousness). Neurological and other biological underpinnings are complexly related as well.

Once one has become sensitised to an area you notice more readily things that are possibly related to it (the theory of the lowering of the perception threshold). So, for example, I became aware some time back that some authors have sought to combine brain science and children’s learning capacity in a multicultural context. The following example is brief and not intended to be more than illustrative. Zaretta Hammond (2014) gives us a well-intentioned example of this potential meld of neuroscience and progressive education in her Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. The author tries to take on some quasi-neurological arguments about the ways in which American school children from non-English backgrounds learn. Without seeking to oversimplify the whole book, it does seem to rest on the idea that the brains of kids from certain ‘backgrounds’ (which codes for ‘race’ in this American context) have developed mentally in certain ways that needs to be taken into account. It appears to come close to saying that non-white kids are ‘wired’ differently because of their milieu/upbringing. It does seem as if this is a reinvention of a similar set of arguments. Although the book is clearly well-intentioned (even allied to the realm of compensatory education), it reminds us of problematic initiatives from previous American social sciences where the concept of ‘race’ was mapped to the so-called bell curve of IQ scores (Herrnstein & Murray, 2010). Hammond’s book effectively talks about the project of NESB (CALD) kids in a remedial vein and sees its project as part of ‘building their intellectual capacity’. Of course, because of the admixture of neuroplasticity, there is also the idea that we can help those under-connected brains to become more efficient. Hammond argues that we would do this by concerted effort and by teaching in a culturally responsive way. Culturally responsive teaching and pedagogy is a ‘good thing’ for a whole series of reasons, but to ground all this in a perceived neurological differences surely needs further thought.

From Bio to Biopsychosocial and the Historical Political Dimension

Whether we like to admit it or not, we owe a debt to Rene Descartes’ foundational thinking about mind and body. At the very least, it gives us a ‘dualism’ to push back against. We have learned from his ‘error’ (Damasio, 2006), and new paradigms try to address the topic of people (and bodies) and their thinking more syncretically and more holistically. As mentioned above, thinking about the brain as an organ could be another way of bringing materialism back in. So we can link this to ‘new materialism’ (Ellenzweig & Zammito, 2017; Sarah & John, 2017), a development that relates to these ongoing debates about an ‘ecological’ view of people and their material world (see Coole & Frost, 2010; Devellennes & Dillet, 2018). Authors in this paradigm argue that we are constituted materially in a ‘material’ world which is to be understood in the most epistemically fluid way (Barad, 2007). As also mentioned, a different version of a related argument about mind in an ecological context was made by Bateson some time back. These perspectives try to link, for example, ontology and agency to politics/sociology and to the natural world and science. It is dizzying stuff. In some way the paradigm makes up in inclusiveness what it lacks in coherence.

For those with long memories, some of this could be related back to earlier debates within Marxism/historical materialism. Matter matters, as it were. Italian theorist Timpanaro (1975) argued a while back, the Left has to take materiality (and science) seriously or simply be condemned to idealism. Nevertheless, the shadow of dualism is still there, just as it was for Gregory Bateson’s intriguing attempts to build an ecology of mind (Bateson, 2000).

Neural imaging has given these debates a new twist, but the issue of our biological materiality and the old ‘split’ between brain and mind is not that easily relegated/erased. We know that mapping the brain (Carter, 1998) is not the same as mapping the mind, but the project to get more specific about brain regions and their functions is heralded as a new frontier. It is one that will continue to be explored, even though many scientists are currently sceptical of some of the claims advanced by brain researchFootnote 1 (Albright et al., 2000; Rose & Abi-Rached, 2013).

Neuro—The Book and Its Intervention

The release of Rose and Abi-Rached’s book was timely. Personally, it immediately caught my attention partly because I follow Rose’s work (Rose, 1990, 1998). In a biographical sense, I was drawn to thinking harder about the limits of neurobiological explanations precisely because I did not have a science background. ‘Of that which we cannot know, we must remain silent’ is fine in a philosophical sense, but feels frustrating when developments that affect our sociological explanations are cut across by things we cannot engage with. When the book was written (nearly a decade ago now), the neurosciences had already entered an expansionist phase. As Egan said, they had ‘escaped the lab’. New non-invasive brain imaging techniques were an accelerant to this. Watching bits of the brain ‘lighting up’ was suddenly seemingly standing in for us ‘seeing thinking’ (Illes, 2007).

As the authors also pointed out ‘neuro-’ had rapidly became attached to numerous disciplines and practices. In a very short time, the prefix gave us neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry, neuroaesthetics, neuromarketing, neurotherapies, and so on. The authors saw the need to think through the links to what we might call ‘brain policy’ (Blank, 1999), that is, the deployment of brain science technologies that take the experimental modelling of/about neurochemistry and insert it into the regulatory real. Having patiently interrogated psychology and governmentality, Rose saw how such discourses were relatable to biopolitics and the ‘politics of life itself’ (Rose, 2001). In a sense neuro- had replaced psy-, as their book puts it. The stakes could hardly be higher.

Neuro was mostly very well received (Clough, 2014; Gere, 2014; Gottschalk, 2015). Partly this was because the book and its project were seen as open-minded and prepared to engage seriously with neurobiological approaches in their own terms. This was not some sort of hatchet job. As Gere (2014) said, this even-handedness allowed the book to deliver some serious and cogent criticisms when necessary. The authors are also aware that social scientists do not control every research agenda or funding priority. The brain sciences and those that want to use them proceed apace. They will not wait for sociologists to raise theoretical objections (although one could imagine that some ethical limits will have to be ongoingly negotiated, as the history of eugenics shows us). Important discussions around ethics in this new neurobiological research space continue to attract scrutiny. For a discussion of a cross-cultural examination of brain science and ethics, see Amadio et al. (2018). For me and other researchers, reaching some accommodation with the materiality of the brain and its decision-making (and thinking through what difference these models might make and in what circumstances) is of ongoing concern. As Illes and Bird (2006) say, ‘advances in neuroscience increasingly challenge long-held views of the self and the individual’s relationship to society’ (p. 511).

As Rose and Abi-Rached are aware, there is a tendency with the new brain sciences to join up the dots too hastily. The positivistic lure of brain science is great, but do measurements of neurochemical mechanisms of the brain hold the ‘real key’ to human behaviour? Rose and Abi-Rached are at pains to suggest why this cannot be the case. A. C. Grayling (2022) recently made an allied point. Brain imaging and experimental investigations are not complete in themselves. This is frontier knowledge, but not necessarily sedimented fact. The cognitive functions that neuroscience explores are the ones most susceptible to our current means of investigation—that is sensory pathways. These it can trace/measure. As Grayling puts it, ‘correlations are what neuroscience observes—not causes—and therefore not explanations (…) but correlations [that] are highly suggestive of explanations, so much so that in some cases clinical applications can be derived from them’ (Grayling, 2022, p. 302).

In a similar vein we may need to get used to the idea (that we have known for a while really) that the brain makes decisions ‘for us’ behind the scenes and usually long before we think we have decided things with our conscious minds. It is part of its ‘remit’ to audit what resources are needed to do what is required to ensure our survival. Conscious thinking is too slow for the brain in this mode (Barrett, 2020). You have to be ‘wired’ to run from a snake independent of your knowledge of herpetology.

Coming back to trying to get a handle on the importance of neuro, it is not useful to set up neuroscience as a straw person. Defeating a caricature of brain science would be a pyrrhic victory (and, crucially, would ensure that we would not be taken seriously by the scientists themselves). Arguably, this is the key strategic advantage in Rose collaborating with Abi-Rached. Medical research is organised knowledge (Sklair, 1974), and therefore any attempt to debate within and across it has to take cognisance of this. Nor would steering away from it altogether be satisfying. As indicated, to suppose that we could simply ‘park’ brain science while we proceed to talk only politically and philosophically about the behaviour patterns it relates to would be a weak position. Even if the brain is not fully ‘in charge’, it is implicated in agency/decision-making both rational and irrational.

Rose and Abi-Rached’s book carefully picks its way through the technical arguments for us. However, it does not ‘bow down’ to science just because it is science. This aids its project of paying attention to internal debates and forms of critique that are politically progressive whilst being sceptical about overclaims. As implied, they are clear that brain science cannot be a sufficient or complete explanation of all aspects of lived behaviour. Nor do they necessarily concede to what they see as the neuroscientists’ claim to be more ‘objective’ about motivations and agency. As one might expect from Rose, the book is sure-footed over this terrain of biopolitics and governmentality. As he points out (Hansson & Lindh, 2018), neuroscience is potentially intervening in a set of debates that psychology has already ‘colonised’, and governmentality is surely stitched into the fabric of such world views.

To put it another way, whatever findings neuroscience might come up with about how individuals’ brains think/function would surely have to pass through the social, as it were (and the historico-legal, come to that). Regimes of truth depend upon a number of institutions and supporting practices and theories. As we ‘other Foucauldians’ would agree, the key fact about discourse is that it is productive. The doing of a praxis brings its object of study into being. Hence the importance of critiquing interventions into such inherently complex phenomena as domestic violence and policy, as Egan demonstrates. The real world is more complex than theory alone (as criticisms of ‘lab rat’ psychology said decades ago). When approaching neurological research, we cannot just ‘cherry pick’ (Amadio, 2018). We would have to think about the bases for selective uptake on a case-by-case basis. This is not to reject neuroscience tout court.

Questions remain of course about how we select its uses and who is selecting and for what purposes. Can we solve our problems by assuming we can pick good uses from bad ones and outlaw some neuroscience uses and encourage others? Who would make such a decision, and on what basis? For example, could we conveniently separate ‘good’ uses (e.g., helping stroke victims recover by looking at how to re-wire their neurons) from ‘bad’ ones (e.g., assuming we could map or impute ‘criminal tendencies’ by wiring up young offenders’ brains)? Would this be the equivalent of making docile brains in order to identify and control docile bodies?

Neuroplasticity and social learning add much further complexity. Some might say that, if the brain is ‘social’, then could we also admit it can be antisocial, but that both of these can be (re)trained. Once again, this leads us towards an ethical minefield. The authors clearly demonstrate that we cannot collapse the debates to being one of science versus the humanities—both are inscribed within a larger frame. History and power/knowledge always matter. The book is very careful not to reduce history and politics to purely technological frameworks. Debates about free will (and responsibility and motivations to change) are complex topics, as the short example about legal applications suggests. Responsibilisation has been criticised as a neoliberal control mechanism/agenda, but the idea of taking no responsibility for our actions and decisions would be unhelpful, as well as faintly absurd. ‘My brain made me do it’ is not a sufficient defence.

Rose and Abi-Rached are wary of falling off the high wire on one side or the other. As they say, socioreductionism has to be held against pure positivism. The concept of the self seems relatively simple, but that too is deceptive. The authors underscore the idea that the (Western idea of the) ‘self’ is neither un-influenced by externalities nor sovereign in the classic liberal sense. Nor is it a natural and self-explanatory category. Broadly, they argue that the self as a category is an artefact of history, culture meaning, and language (allied points were made some time back by anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973)). However, that does not mean ‘it’ simply disappears when stretched across these categories. When picking our way between neuroscientific conceptions and sociological ones, it would be, as the authors say, ‘prudent, therefore, to abstain from both celebration and critique’ (Rose & Abi-Rached, 2013, p. 203). Or, to put it another way, the jury is still out (Albright et al., 2000).

Conclusion

I do not really have a conclusion, at least if that is thought of an end point, far less a teleology. As a teacher/teacher educator, I have enjoyed reading my way into debates about neurobiology, but I am still not sure how ‘essential’ (or theory near) they are for me. One can teach sociology of education without ever placing neurobiological views of personhood at the very centre. However, we do not want the neuro perspective to be an absent centre either. We do not want biology to be the bedrock that remains when all the sociological stuff has blown away. We surely have not reached the point where personhood is universally thought of as merely brainhood (Clough, 2014). Partly, this is matter of watching which way the debates go. After all, we have rubbed along with psychology of education and theories of developmentalism for years, and we can mostly agree to run in parallel. Lived realties have always been an important touchstone for sociological theorising. I am reminded of a remark made by an academic friend when there was a big conference in the UK on the ‘discovery of the body’ in sociology: I am glad this has come about, I always knew I had a body, she said. We have brains too, and minds and (possibly) genetic predispositions too.

The strong suggestion of books like Neuro is that we will never have a complete explanation of either brains or how neurobiology relates to governmentality and actual behaviours and predispositions, let alone what socio-politics and law and history do to these debates. Trying to put things together and become aware of parallel paradigms and developments in allied fields is part of the fun of being a thinking person. Even if it can be frustrating at times. Sometimes it feels as if we are condemned to oscillate wildly between the fantasy that we can know everything and the shrug that says whatever we find out will never be enough. What metaphor will suffice here? The jigsaw is likely to be incomplete for a long while (and there may be ‘missing pieces’ that we might never find, even down the back of the sofa), but, if we keep looking, and placing bits that do fit together, then at least a partial picture might emerge. Isn’t there some satisfaction in that?