To extend our understanding of how social structures and social processes impact behavior, sociologists have been challenged to incorporate the potential explanatory role of genetics in their models. Here, we draw propositions from three major understandings of illness causation offered by social theory – fundamental causes, social stress processes, and social safety net theories. We tailor hypotheses to the case of alcohol dependence, long considered a multifaceted problem, defying simple explanation and having both biological and social roots. After briefly reviewing current appeals for transdisciplinary research, we describe both sociological and genetic theories, and derive propositions expected under each and under a transdisciplinary theoretical frame. Analyses of a later wave of the preeminent medical science study, the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA), reveals a complex interplay of how the GABRA2 gene works with and against social structural factors to produce cases meeting DSM/ICD diagnoses. When both genetic and social factors are controlled, virtually equivalent effects of each remain; and, only modest evidence suggests that genetic influence works through social structural conditions and experiences. Further exploratory analyses using multiplicative terms reveal enhanced gene-environment interactions: 1) women are largely unaffected in their risk for alcohol dependence by allele status at this candidate gene; 2) family support attenuates genetic influence; 3) childhood deprivation exacerbates genetic predispositions. We discuss how these findings lead us to consider the essential >intradisciplinary tension in sociological theories (i.e., the role of proximal and distal influences in social processes). Overall, our findings point to the promise of theories blending social and genetic influences by focusing directly on dynamic, networked sequences that produce different pathways to health and illness.
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