New Book: Debugging the Link between Social Theory and Social Insects
Diane Rodgers (Northern Illinois University)
Louisiana University State Press (240 pages) 
IBSN: 978-0-8071-3369-9 PAPER

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, natural and social
scientists began comparing certain insects to human social organization.
Entomologists theorized that social insects—such as ants, bees, wasps,
and termites—organize themselves into highly specialized, hierarchical
divisions of labor. Using a distinctly human vocabulary that reflected
the dominant social structure of the time, they described insects as
queens, workers, and soldiers and categorized their behaviors with words
like marriage, slavery, farming, and factories. At the same time,
sociologists working to develop a model for human organization compared
people to insects, relying on the same premise that humans arrange
themselves hierarchically. These co-constructed theories reinforced one
another, thereby naturalizing Western conceptions of race, class, and
gender as they gained prominence in popular culture and the scientific
world.
	Using a critical science studies perspective not previously
applied to research on social insect symbolism, Rodgers attempts to
"debug" this theoretical co-construction. She provides sufficient
background information to accommodate readers unfamiliar with
entomology—including in-depth explanations of the terms used in the
research and discussion of social insects, particularly the insect
sociality scale. Placing these theories in a historical and
cross-cultural context, Rodgers explains why hierarchical ideas gained
prominence, despite the existence of opposing theories in the
literature.
	Such analysis is necessary because it sheds light both on newly
proposed scientific models and on future changes in human social
structures. Contemporary scientists have begun to challenge the
traditional understanding of insect social organization and to propose
new interdisciplinary models that combine ideas about social insect and
human organizational structure with computer technologies. Without a
thorough understanding of how the old models came about, residual
language and embedded assumptions may remain and continue to reinforce
hierarchical social constructions.

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