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Gerhard Vowinckel, Hamburg:
Verwandschaft, Sexualität und Gene
(Kinship, Sexuality, and Genes)
Kinship was the most important medium of social bonding in pre-modern societies. Kin relationships regimented social life and were the basis for ascribing social status to a person. Her/his prospects of life depended almost completely on this status. Suitable marriages and lawful offspring were of crucial importance for the reliability of social relationships and for the kin group members possibilities to exist. This is why sexuality was strictly ordered according to the exigencies of the reason of lineage. Together with kinship, sexuality along with progeny have lost a good deal of their former functions in modern societies. The exoneration of functions has partly resulted in deregulations which yield more scope to “natural”, genetically pre-programmed needs than conditions of life in archaic societies.
About the Author:
Gerhard Vowinckel, Prof. Dr. phil., born in 1946. He studied sociology, political economy, psychology, and biology at Hamburg university. After his graduation (Dipl.-Soz. 1973) he was part of the team conducting a scientific accompanying study for "Sesame Street". He obtained his Ph. D. in 1978 by developing a "relationship test" as as a pre-language diagnostic instrument for pre-school age children. Since 1976 he worked in various functions at the University of the Armed Forces in Hamburg. His "habilitation" (German post-doctoral university teaching qualification) dealt with the civilization of emotions and their physical expression, combining historic-sociological analysis with approaches of biology and development psychology. In 1983 he was appointed "Privatdozent", since 1998 Associate Professor at Hamburg University. Along this line of biological, psychological, and sociological approaches in analyzing phenomena of social and cultural history he has published extensively on educational ideas, on forms of military organisation, on the evolution of moral concepts, etc. In „Verwandtschaft, Freundschaft und die Gesellschaft der Fremden“ (Kinship, Friendship, and the Society of Strangers, Darmstadt 1995) he systematically ties theories of modern socio-biology to sociological theories and research results. In „Gesinnungstäter und Strategen. Politisch-moralische Denkformen und soziale Lebensräume“ (Acts of Conscience vs. Strategies. Politico-Moral Categories and Social Lebensraum, Konstanz 1996) he takes moral typologies of development psychology (Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg) as starting points for a socio-oecological analysis of political-moral thinking.
Address:
Prof. Dr. Gerhard Vowinkel
Nerzweg 6
22159 Hamburg
Tel. (040) 6439524
e-mail: GerhardVowinckel@t-online.de
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