Book Review: Other Areas: Essays on Neuroscience and Political Theory: Thinking the Body Politic
| Author | Jason Edwards |
| Published date | 01 May 2013 |
| Date | 01 May 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1478-9302.12016_35 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
separation of powers, administrative courts,‘fiscal consti-
tution’ and balanced budgets.Finally, chapter 8 discusses
the core concept of property; the adjacent concepts of
ownership, possessive individualism, individual initiative,
legal privilege, negative justice and private association;
and the peripheral concepts of capital accumulation,
private inheritance, voluntary savings and maximised
shareholder profits.‘It is the order ing of these concepts
in this specific configuration that gives neo-liberalism its
distinctive identity as an ideology’, says Turner (p. 218).
The book’s style is accessible and the arguments are
presented in a clear manner.The book is informed and
informative; it is equally useful to students and academ-
ics. Overall, it achieves its objectives.
Evangelia Sembou
(Independent Scholar)
Essays on Neuroscience and Political Theory:
Thinking the Body Politic by F.Vander Valk (ed.).
Abingdon: Routledge, 2012. 294pp., £27.99, ISBN
9780415782029
This collection of essays, which is aimed mainly at
graduate students and academics researching in the
area, focuses on the relationship between neuroscience
and political theory. It brings together authors who
claim that contemporary neuroscience can illuminate
central problems in political theory with those who
hold a more sceptical view. The result is a number of
contributions that explore to interesting effect the
complexities of the relationship. On the one hand, it
examines the implications of recent findings in neuro-
science, such as the discovery of mirror neurons and the
extent of neural plasticity,for issues such as the unity of
the self, the character of political agency, the contribu-
tion of emotion to political action, and the possibilities
for and constraints on democratic politics given the
interaction between brain, mind and society. At the
same time, several of the essays demonstrate the ways in
which neuroscientific knowledge has itself been shaped
across the twentieth century by social and political
forces (see the contribution by Meloni in particular).
What is at stake in these – at times very intricate –
arguments is set out clearly in the editor’s introduction.
Of not least importance is a re-evaluation of the rela-
tionship between the natural and social sciences, given
the claims by some neuroscientists that they hold the
key to the study of social and political relations.
On the whole,the book works very well. Discussions
of neuroscience in political theory have been limited to
the work of a few notable authors, such as William
Connolly and Leslie Thiele, yet through their (critical)
engagement with the existing literature,the contributors
show how there is considerably more mileage in an
exploration of the relationship. The most successful
pieces are written from a sceptical position, and particu-
larly noteworthy is the essay by Slaby, Haueis and
Choudhury, as well as the editor’s own contribution.
What their arguments point towards is the possibility of
a critical evaluation of contemporary neuroscience and
its social and political implications by political theorists.
This is an important task given the often crude and
reductive picture of the constitution of social and politi-
cal life by ‘the brain’that increasingly pervades popular
intellectual culture and holds too many social scientists
in thrall. Moreover, one comes away from a reading of
this book with a clearer view of the extent to and means
by which the organisation of social and political relations
shapes embodied human brains and minds.
Jason Edwards
(Birkbeck, University of London)
Health Justice by Sridhar Venkatapuram. Cam-
bridge: Polity Press, 2011. 270pp., £16.99, ISBN
9780745650357
This richly informative book aims to redefine the
concept of health in terms of the capabilities approach
pioneered by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum.
Venkatapuram argues against the received view that
health should be understood in terms of the absence of
disease and statistically normal functioning. Instead he
contends that it should be understood as the capability
for functioning in those ways that are essential for the
realisation of human dignity. Put negatively, an indi-
vidual without one or more of those basic capabilities
to a threshold level would lack the minimum condi-
tions for human flourishing. That line of argument is
then used to defend the cosmopolitan claim that all
humans are morally entitled to the basic capabilities.
In addition,the author argues that the causes of health
should be expanded beyond the biological, individual
behaviour and physical environment to include social
conditions. Recent researchinto the social deter minants
of health suggests, for example,that hierarchy can have a
deleterious effect on health. Equally the workof Sen and
248 POLITICAL THEORY
© 2013 TheAuthors. Political Studies Review © 2013 Political Studies Association
Political Studies Review: 2013, 11(2)
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