The reception of sociobiology in French-speaking Europe

This work puts into historical and intellectual perspective the virulent debate on sociobiology that shook the scientific world and, more broadly, society as a whole in the 1970s. It summarizes the arguments involved, traces their socio-political as well as scientific roots and implications, and presents a plea for genuine anthropological knowledge capable of overcoming the pitfalls of all reductionism, whether biological or not. The text also raises the question of the persistent influence of a sociobiologizing ideology in current neuroscience and elsewhere.