The Social Side of Sex

Like eating, sexual behavior will be featured through this book as an important category of behavior that is shaped by both nature and culture. Whereas food is needed for survival, sex is needed for reproduction.

Sex has been a bitter battleground between those who explain it on the basis of nature and evolution and those who emphasize cultural construction. Is sex a matter of genes and hormones causing people to feel desires the way nature has prescribed them? Or is culture the principal cause of who wants to do what to whom in bed?

Some features of sexuality are found everywhere and may well be rooted in nature. In all cultures, for example, men seem to desire a greater number of sexual partners than women (Pedersen, Miller, Putcha-Bhagavatula, & Yang, 2002). Sex is everywhere the main way (and usually the only way) to make babies. The same basic sex practices are known to most cultures. Sex historian Reay Tannahill (1980) observed that the sex manuals written thousands of years ago in ancient China covered almost all the same techniques one would find in a sex manual today, with only one exception (sadomasochism).

Virtuous Vegetarians

Throughout this book, we will feature research relevant to eating. We have selected eating for this treatment because human eating is relevant to both nature and culture.

On the nature side, eating is natural; all animals eat. Eating is a vital means of getting what one needs for survival, which, as we saw, was a crucial goal of biological life. Social animals are social precisely because their social interactions help them get food and thereby to survive. Like other animals, humans feel bad when they do not have enough to eat, and these bad feelings motivate people to seek food. Also like other animals, humans quickly learn to dislike and avoid foods that make them sick.

Humans resemble other animals in their need to eat regularly. But eating has been transformed by culture. Unlike all other animals, humans go on diets, have elaborate systems of etiquette and table manners, cook their food, experiment endlessly with recipes, and sometimes serve meals to total strangers.

Another uniquely human trait is the tendency to reject certain categories of food based on ideas. Many religions, for example, prescribe or forbid particular foods, especially on certain days. Based on religious views, some people will eat beef but not pork, while others eat pork but not beef.

Culture and Human Social Life: CULTURE DEFINED

Culture is thus an advanced way of being social. If we think of evolution as proceeding from simple creatures

Culture is harder to define than nature. (In fact, Boyd and Richerson, 1985, listed 164 different definitions of culture that different thinkers have used!) Th e term originally referred to a system of farming (a usage one can still see in terms like agriculture). Then it came to refer to musical and artistic achievements, such as paintings and symphonies. Social scientists eventually began to use the term to refer to what a large group of people has in common. French culture, for example, refers to everything that French people share: language, values, food preferences, a style of government, a place (France), and a shared sense of connection to the artistic and historical achievements of other French people.

For present purposes, the important thing about culture is that it is a kind of social system. Just as a pack of wolves or a school of fish is a social system, so is France. But there are obvious differences. France is much more complex than a pack of wolves. It is rich in symbols, meanings, and information. There are more different kinds of relationships among the French people than among the wolves.

Culture and Human Social Life: SOCIAL ANIMAL OR CULTURAL ANIMAL?

Being social animals is not what is most special about human beings. What is special is being cultural animals. Some other animals have bits and scraps of culture.

Social psychologists like to use the phrase “the social animal” to describe human nature. Th is phrase has been used by many influential thinkers, from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle right down to the modern social psychologist Elliot Aronson (2007). By calling people social animals, these thinkers are saying that people seek connections to others and prefer to live, work, and play together with other people.

People are indeed social animals, but using this label may miss the mark of what is special about human beings. Plenty of other animals are social, from ants to elephants (as Aronson and others acknowledge). Human beings are not the only and probably not even the most social animals.