Bernard Lahire, Les structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines, Paris, La Découverte, “Sciences sociales du vivant” collection, 2023, 970 pages

1 It might seem inappropriate, or even reductive, to review in the pages of our thematic journal a book that so directly challenges a discipline—sociology—on a subject as broad as the fundamental structures of human societies. However, as will be seen, the work, both critical and theoretical, also concerns the central place of the “magical-religious” in the cultural specificity of the human species. Indeed, one of the strengths of this substantial volume of nearly a thousand pages, rich with references to the life sciences, is its challenge to the “theological” dimension of the social sciences. These fields—principally sociology, but also history and anthropology—have not yet fully realized their materialist revolution because they have based their development on the idea of humanity's cultural self-creation: “Biology had to struggle against the idea of a Creator as the origin of Earth and life, and it is now the social sciences that must confront the idea of humanity’s cultural self-creation. For we have moved from a God who created the entire universe to individuals treated as little gods creating their own destiny” (p. 34).

2 Fully aware of the epistemic incongruity of his critique, the author seeks to reconnect with the realism and legalism of the cumulative sciences by precisely reestablishing the strained links between the humanities and the life sciences. This is a revolutionary—or reactionary, depending on one’s perspective—gesture, by a distinguished sociologist who has made significant contributions in several research areas (educational inequalities, illiteracy, the literary condition, art and dreams, etc.), in critical dialogue with the theory of fields or the links between individual dispositions and social contexts, as per Pierre Bourdieu. This extensive work was born out of deep dissatisfaction and a fruitful intuition. Dissatisfaction with the confinement of the social sciences within historical perspectivism, its specialist divisions, and its literary insularity at a distance from the empirical-logical sciences. Intuition of the link between the biological condition of the human species, particularly “secondary altriciality” (gestation and birth as a premature being, with a plastic brain, requiring a long period of care to reach full maturity and ensure subsequent longevity, the latter itself exceptional), and the resulting relations of “domination-dependence” (between parents and children, men and women, older and younger siblings, the young and the old, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, etc.).

3 Drawing on years of extensive reading in the fields of biology, ethology, paleontology, and archaeology, the volume is conceived as a “map” for recognizing material conditions with social implications, far removed from the narrow biological determinism characteristic of a certain conservative sociobiology. Following in the footsteps of Marx, Durkheim, and Bourdieu, the author believes that identifying invariants of social inertia is essential to any emancipatory effort to correct inequalities. The challenge is to collectively recognize the major structuring facts related to the differential evolution of species, the main lines of their transformation, and the overarching laws of the material dynamics of social relationships.

4 The book is divided into three major sections. First, a critical review of the advances and epistemic limits of the social sciences. Next, an assessment of the debts that human societies owe to the history of life. Finally, the structuring of human societies, from symbolic faculties to the division of labor and forms of family life. Here, we will only highlight a few key points from each of these sections to focus, in accordance with the theme of our journal, on the “magical-religious” thread that, among other constructions of artifacts, ultimately characterizes, in the author’s view, the human species. Confessing his “faith in science,” like Durkheim, Darwin, and Einstein, the sociologist challenges the constructivist, nominalist, and pointillist tendencies of the historical sciences that disqualify the search for the laws of reality on principle. Jean-Claude Passeron’s famous Sociological Reasoning (1991 in French), which ties all knowledge about the social world to its irreducible historicity, is his main target. More space would be needed to delve into Lahire’s argument against the “non-Popperian” or non-experimental space. Suffice it to say that breaking out of the hermeneutic and relativist circle of the social sciences to reintegrate cultural facts into their long-term material conditions opens up, according to the author, new perspectives on what causes the inertia of the unequal or asymmetrical fabric of social relationships. More precisely: “Before being determined by the material bases of their existence (Marx), humans are determined by the basic sociological coordinates linked to the biological properties of their species (Darwin)” (p. 309).

5 One of the principles of this repositioning of the social sciences' perspective lies in comparing processes and behaviors across species. The author shows, with extensive documentation, that many animal species, from bees to primates, develop social forms not devoid of structure or complexity. We might even find amusement in the simulated acts of copulation used by chimpanzees to assert dominance over their peers, or in the perfect coordination of certain bird pairs to guard the nest and ensure the survival of their offspring. It is on these comparative bases at the scale of evolution and species differentiation that the main features of human sociality are outlined: altriciality and neoteny (repeatedly highlighted as a basic explanatory core), domination-dependence, sexual attraction among like individuals but avoidance of incest, motherhood and fatherhood, the law of imitation, technical creativity, and so on. Among these is the unique ability of Homo sapiens to overcome the trials of death, illness, and suffering through imagination. Following many others, the author thus sees in this faculty that compensates powerlessness one of the key traits of the “magical-religious.” Specialists might find the conflation of magic and religion somewhat simplistic. However, the author maintains a certain level of generality when, following Durkheim, he addresses a set of thoughts and actions relating to things as fascinating as they are frightening, known as the sacred. The well-known ambivalences of this latter concept, formally opposed to the profane, are not excessively developed. Nor are the variations over time and space in beliefs and practices, analogically designated as religious, the focus here. What must be retained is that the magical-religious sphere, a prime site of symbolic creativity, is rooted in the physical vulnerability and heightened imaginative capacity of the human species. Addressing other key points, such as the differential valence of the sexes or the familial gestation of social relations, the interspecies approach is not lacking in arguments or references to convince us of structural inertias like gendered domination. The exclusion of women from positions of power, dialogue with the sacred, or the defense of the community originates not only from the burdens of breastfeeding but also, later, in the bipedal constitution of the species, which narrows the female pelvis and thus necessitates premature birth and the ensuing close care. However, as mentioned earlier, the author does not conclude that such a strong link between nature and culture implies fatalism. On the contrary, establishing these laws allows us to better understand the constraints, thus enabling us to overcome them with full awareness.

6 The ambition of this biosociological map matches the deep dissatisfaction the author feels when faced with the distressing spectacle, in his view, of social sciences trapped in their nominalist or constructivist idiosyncrasies and fragmented by disciplinary corporatism and political, technical, or even administrative demands. Lahire's zeal for bridging the gap between the laws of the evolution of the inhabited world, the cultural specificity of the human race, and the theories of its social forms is nothing short of refreshing. As mentioned in relation to the magical-religious, the downside of such ambition is to remain at a level of generality that may hinder the desirable refinement of the endeavor. Drawing inspiration from the mathematicians of the Bourbaki Group (“Nicolas Bourbaki” was their collective pseudonym), who worked together in France in the late 1930s to take stock of and establish a coherent structure from the knowledge accumulated in their discipline, Bernard Lahire advocates for the collective development of the bridge he builds between factual temporalities and scientific disciplines. This disruptive work will, at the very least, provide any mind curious about conceptual innovation with valuable references within the physical and life sciences, which for their part, have managed to distance themselves from the naive realism and positivism of their foundations.