On "Biocultures"

Bradley Lewis at the Literature, Arts and Medicine Blog brings word of an exciting new approach to the kind of interdisciplinary work that characterizes the medical humanities: "biocultures."

One of the most challenging problems of contemporary scholarship involves the deep segregation of the academy: between the humanities and social sciences on the one hand and biology and the natural sciences on the other hand. This “two culture” divide has long been lamented for the biases and distortions it creates in knowledge and for the increasing risks associated with disconnecting bioscience capacities from the wisdom of history, culture, and philosophy.

Indeed.  As I shall argue in my dissertation, the divide animates some of our problems with pain management.

Yet even as many of us have lamented this situation, a grassroots movement of academic research has gradually emerged that effectively integrates the two cultures. Certainly traditional medical humanities and bioethics are part of this grassroots movement, but more recently they have been joined by scholars in areas like disability studies, cultural studies of the body, gay and lesbian studies, gender studies, Africana studies, Asian-American studies, Latino-Latina studies, science studies, literature and science, public health, medical anthropology, medical sociology, and medical education (particularly professors of medicine and society).

These scholars not only intermingle facts and values from the two cultures in their work, many of them break down the “fact/value” distinction all together—asking pressing questions about what are the values associated with various research agendas (the making of facts) in the first place.

Agreed.  I particularly like the last sentence -- breaking down the fact/value distinction, or at least problematizing it, is a core project for a medical humanist, IMO.

The main thing missing from this grassroots movement is a common identity. This why Lennard Davis and David Morris are proposing the term “biocultures” as an umbrella term for this group of scholarship. Davis and Morris define biocultures as a new and “counter-intuitive (but perhaps destined to be commonplace) proposal: that culture and history must be rethought with an understanding of their inextricable, if highly variable, relation to biology” (Davis and Morris, forthcoming).

Wow.  The work of Lennard Davis and David Morris is extremely important in and across a variety of disciplines.  Both are formally trained as literature scholars, but the former is one of the leaders of disability studies, and a member of the only department in the U.S. that currently grants a Ph.D in disability studies.  Morris writes on a variety of issues, and his work is particularly important to my studies as he has (very successfully, IMO) examined pain from a cultural vantage point.

To learn more about the emerging biocultures movement you can check out the upcoming special issue of New Literary History that is edited by Davis and Morris devoted to biocultures. Davis and Morris kick off the issue with their “Biocultures Manifesto” which will send chills down the spine of any of you in the medical humanities world who have felt that you are all alone (or almost all alone) in your university.

The rationale for Project Biocultures is fascinating.  I do wonder how those on the "other" side of this divide will receive this project.  The (non-existent, IMO) boundary between facts and values is, in my experience, often taken as a given by scientists, physicians, etc., even though there are a plethora of compelling arguments from Hume to Quine, Kuhn, and Feyerabend that cast the distinction into serious doubt.

If those disposed to hang onto the distinction have not been convinced yet, I wonder what rhetoric Project Biocultures will employ to disabuse dissenting interlocutors.

Thoughts?

Comments

[Patrick S. O'Donnell]

Daniel,

I know I've been MIA with the guest blogging stint, but I'll be returning shortly.

Interesting stuff that I know too little about to comment. I do hope to address the fact/value question in a future post in a manner germane to Medical Humanities folks that will, at the same time, be plausible if not persuasive to those trained to see hard and fast boundaries and perhaps have psychological investments in maintaining such boundaries (I do think the distinction implies bounaries of a sort, they're just soft and permeable...).

[Felice Aull]

I too am concerned about how a dialogue between biocultures and bioscience/biomedicine will develop. I am afraid that those who identify with the biocultures movement (and I count myself among them) are speaking among themselves rather than with biomedical scientists and educators. Although it is true, as Brad Lewis points out, that there are some professional medical educators in the biocultures group, they are very few in number. As one who trained in biomedical science and who has spent most of my professional life among biomedical scientists and educators, I am keenly aware that concerns over facts/values are not even on the radar screen for most, partly because they are simply too busy to pay much attention. That is why it is important to encourage more individuals to train and work in the joint fields of medicine and social science/humanities (M.D.-Ph.Ds for example). Biocultures needs to infiltrate the biomedical community with medical scholars who have insight from both sides. And flow in the opposite direction would also be useful.

[Daniel Goldberg]

Patrick,

No worries -- your voice on this blog is welcome whenever and in whatever format you choose.

I look forward to reading your perspective on the fact-value distinction.

Felice,

You raise a number of important points.

Yet, I often find myself torn on this issue. On the one hand, as a budding medical humanist, my primary concern lies in using erudition in the cultivation of virtue in people's daily lives. This means, IMO, that to influence medical practices requires conversation with those in a position to change behavior and policy.

On the other hand, I feel more than a little anger that the issues germane to the medical humanities are, to use your phrase "not on the radar screen" for, I daresay, a relatively large number of participants in medical and scientific discourse (if others disagree, please feel free to correct me).

I have personally experienced disapppointment on a number of occasions already when concerns such as the fact-value problem, which deeply and directly influences clinical practice (evidence-based medicine, anyone?), are dismissed as an interesting philosophical question but one irrelevant to medicine.

This is one chief advantage to bioethics, that it has achieved excellent penetrance in the culture of biomedicine. But as many commentators have noted, this achievement came at a cost, inasmuch as the language and discourse of traditional bioethics adopted many of the mores of biomedical culture. This leads to the well-known insider-outsider problem, and also resulted in a particular style or a way of doing bioethics that, in my own opinion, is not necessarily the most fruitful avenue for either inquiry or practice.

If there's anything to take from the humanities, it is the value of conversation and dissent between colleagues. But to get there, a basic belief is required that what an interlocutor has to say is even worth hearing. And I confess that I have experienced disappointment that sometimes such a basic belief seems lacking.