{"id":1216,"date":"2010-10-14T19:10:03","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T01:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/?p=1216"},"modified":"2010-10-14T19:16:45","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T01:16:45","slug":"immunology-and-the-trunk-monkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/2010\/10\/14\/immunology-and-the-trunk-monkey\/","title":{"rendered":"immunology and the trunk monkey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.micab.umn.edu\/faculty\/Jenkins.html\">Marc Jenkins<\/a> gave a terrific lecture titled &#8220;How the Immune System Remembers Infections&#8221; this week. As a sociological criminologist, I&#8217;ve\u00a0long been fascinated by immunology and its connection to the social organicism of Spencer, Durkheim and others. The immune system\u00a0wondrously\u00a0learns to quickly recognize and neutralize pathogens in the body, even as the pathogens\u00a0quickly evolve and adapt to overcome the immune system. He used this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9MmROefZT8I&amp;feature=related\">trunk monkey<\/a>* video to introduce immune functioning (body=car; pathogen=thief):<\/p>\n<p>By analogy, some argue that communities exercise social control in the same way.\u00a0One hears such analogies when people describe how a social group is brought down by a\u00a0nefarious &#8220;virus&#8221; or &#8220;cancer.&#8221;\u00a0 For example,\u00a0when the Patriots traded Randy Moss to the Vikings, a commentator was asked whether Patriots Coach Bill Belichek considered him a &#8220;cancer&#8221; in the locker room (&#8220;more like a polyp,&#8221; was the clever response). Such social organicism can be carried <em>way<\/em> too far, of course, perhaps even to genocide.<\/p>\n<p>More positively, I&#8217;d compare immune\u00a0response to the sort of rapidly mobilizing and self-sustaining resistance that a good school might develop in response to, say,\u00a0a sudden rash of fights breaking out at the Friday night football games. The destructive behavior can either take root or it can be brought under control pretty quickly, once\u00a0the fans\u00a0in the bleachers learn to recognize and take the collective responsibility to stop it.<\/p>\n<p>Professor Jenkins closed with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4HfMUGsniJ8\">another video<\/a>, and I couldn&#8217;t help but identify\u00a0with the\u00a0host&#8217;s\u00a0completely ineffectual efforts to ward off the pathogen in this one.\u00a0Reminds me to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.health.harvard.edu\/flu-resource-center\/how-to-boost-your-immune-system.htm\">boost the ol&#8217;\u00a0immune system<\/a>\u00a0before winter hits&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: x-small\">* No, that doesn&#8217;t look like\u00a0an actual\u00a0&#8220;monkey&#8221; to me either, but\u00a0&#8220;trunk monkey&#8221; makes for\u00a0a clever name.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marc Jenkins gave a terrific lecture titled &#8220;How the Immune System Remembers Infections&#8221; this week. As a sociological criminologist, I&#8217;ve\u00a0long been fascinated by immunology and its connection to the social organicism of Spencer, Durkheim and others. The immune system\u00a0wondrously\u00a0learns to quickly recognize and neutralize pathogens in the body, even as the pathogens\u00a0quickly evolve and adapt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1219,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions\/1219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/pubcrim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}