Zombies, or The Triumph of the Collective Will

Sociological texts on zombies are mostly interested in human problems (capitalism, pop culture, etc), not in zombies as such. Zombies as a specific form of (non) life remain a blindspot for sociologists. Scientists of other disciplines, like epidemiology and neurosciences, have already declared their ways for studying zombies. Our task is to outline the concepts and hypotheses that sociology could contribute to this emerging interdisciplinary project. The main focus is on the social organization of zombies in relation to the observed features of their behavior. One of the key questions (without a satisfactory answer) of the future sociology of zombies was formulated by the neuroscientists Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek: why single zombies look dumb and clumsy, while big groups of zombies act like a well-coordinated formidable force? In search of a basis for understanding zombies, the essay turns to the classical ideas of sociology (Georg Simmel, Émile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde) and to the later anthropological insights of Mary Douglas, Victor Turner and René Girard. A sociological approach to zombies makes it possible to describe them not as a pathology, but as a special way of organizing a collective (non)life that can successfully compete with the human one.