Oxytocin: Vom Geburts- zum Sozialhormon

Xenia Steinbach, Sabine Maasen

In the mass media, the hormone Oxytocin is currently being debated as the biochemical basis of sociability and a powerful neuropharmacological solution for (re-)establishing societal cohesion. Given its beginning as a 'bodyhormone' early in the 20th century, this article will trace the extraordinary career of Oxytocin from a regulator of birth to a regulator of society. What makes so strong a claim intelligible and acceptable? Our analysis of the scientific discourse on Oxytocin (1906-1990), the mass media discourse since the 1990s, and its repercussions for the scientific discourse during the same period, suggest a series of re-configurations of scientific theories and practices, as well as of the conception of the substance itself. Oxytocin became established in the first half of the 20th century, and as a neurohormone as early as the 1950s, yet during the following decades attracted little scientific attention. Only following the mass media's focus on the suggested effects of Oxytocin on love and bonding did the substance increasingly become the focus of empirical research. This work argues that the reception of Oxytocin as a potential neurohormonal basis for individual sociability strongly relies on the mass media discourses, biopolitical linkages that had already been made in the first half of the 20th century aiming at the regulation of life, and a technoscientific mode of research on Oxytocin. At their intersection Oxytocin emerged as a social hormone.