Like all faculty, Dr. Regnerus has the right to pursue his areas of research and express his point of view. However, Dr. Regnerus’ opinions are his own. They do not reflect the views of the Sociology Department of The University of Texas at Austin. Nor do they reflect the views of the American Sociological Association, which takes the position that the conclusions he draws from his study of gay parenting are fundamentally flawed on conceptual and methodological grounds and that findings from Dr. Regnerus’ work have been cited inappropriately in efforts to diminish the civil rights and legitimacy of LBGTQ partners and their families. We encourage society as a whole to evaluate his claims.
The Sociology Department at The University of Texas at Austin aspires to achieve academic excellence in research, teaching, and public service at the highest level in our discipline. We strive to do so in a context that is based on the highest ethical standards of our discipline and in a context that actively promotes and supports diversity among our faculty and student populations.
The Sociology Department resides in the College of Liberal Arts, which has issued a statement regarding Dr. Regnerus.
The Sociology Department has no affiliation with the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture.
On February 10, 2014, Stuart Hall passed away at the age of 82. In honor of Stuart Hall, Dr. Ben Carrington wrote an essay for the blog Africa is A Country. The essay is entitled, “In gratitude to Stuart Hall, a socialist intellectual who taught us to confront the political with a smile.”
Below is an excerpt of Dr. Carrington’s essay:
Stuart Hall was the most important public intellectual of the past 50 years. In an age where having a TV show allegedly makes someone a public intellectual and where the status of the university you work at counts for more than what you have to say, Hall’s work seems even more urgent and his passing, somehow, even sadder.
But for Hall I wouldn’t have become an academic. There was no space for someone like me before Hall. Discovering the field of Cultural Studies as an undergraduate, I found validation and recognition. Suddenly, my background and way of life as a working-class black kid mattered and was important beyond the confines of south London. It’s taken for granted now that culture matters, that popular culture is a site of politics, that politics saturates everyday life, and that these things can and should be studied in a serious manner. But despite their claims, it was not Sociology, or History, or Economics, or even Anthropology that created this space. It was Cultural Studies. Most intellectuals are known for contributing to our knowledge on a particular topic or specific theme. Hall was different. He created an entire new academic discipline, and then mentored just about every significant scholar that came through Cultural Studies in the 1970s and 80s.
To read the essay in its entirety, follow this link.
Super Bowl Ads are as American as apple pie, and this year one Coca-Cola ad in particular has received some xenophobic backlash. The ad, entitled “America the Beautiful” shows images of a diverse America, set to the anthem “America the Beautiful” being sung in a variety of languages. And when the ad aired in the second half of the Super Bowl, people took to Twitter to voice their frustrations and betrayal at Coca-Cola.
These are just a couple of tweets, more can be seen here on the tumblr account Public Shaming.
After watching the commercial, and reading a handful of tweets, I wondered to myself what others thought so I asked my fellow graduate students in the department a few questions.
Do you find the xenophobic backlash the Coca-Cola commercial has received surprising?
Brandon Robinson:
Unfortunately, I do not find the xenophobic backlash to be surprising in the least. For centuries, anti-immigration sentiments have run deep in this country. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to Arizona SB 1070 (among a host of so many other anti-immigration laws), we can see, at least legally, how deep this anti-immigration sentiment has been and still is today. So no, I did not find it surprising, but yet, it was still depressing to see people express such xenophobic outrage.
Maggie Tate:
I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. The responses to Sebastien de la Cruz’s performance of the national anthem during the NBA finals should have prepared me. I must have been distracted by how bad the Broncos were playing.
I was also interested in how many times the metaphor of a melting pot was used to tweet back against the anti-Coke tweets. I would like to see a public debate that calls out the problematic nature of the melting pot, because it is precisely this metaphor that has allowed for the U.S. to be narrated as tolerant and democratic while also engaging in xenophobic, racist, or otherwise discriminatory actions. A melting pot in a country where the definition of the “average American” is white, straight and always English-speaking produces a homogenous image of what being American can both look and sound like. Differences are melted into a nostalgic version of America’s past. The melting pot is about assimilation, which means that the two lines of response that “It’s Beautiful” produced actually stem from the same foundation. In practice, the melting pot of the U.S. has mostly been based on a version of diversity where differences get erased.
The emphasis on the multiplicity of languages can also be seen as code for claims about race. Not only did Coca Cola produce an ad with “America the Beautiful” sung in different languages, but they also visualized many non-white bodies as American. While the backlash against the commercial is verbalized as a problem of language, I wonder if the response would be similar had the same people been animated by an all-English version of “America the Beautiful.” I assume it would, considering that the selection of a young Mexican-American boy to sing the national anthem in English received a similar degree of backlash.
Some may say that those tweets depicted in the Public Shaming post only reflect an extreme opinion, similar to saying that the KKK only reflect the extreme. Do you find these tweets to only reflect the extreme or do you think they reflect a more general sentiment secretly/not-so-secretly held?
Brandon Robinson:
For a couple reasons, I think that those tweets in that post reflect a general sentiment. One, because of the Internet, people experience a disinhibition effect when being online. Because of the somewhat anonymity the Internet provides along with not having to deal with the same type of social responses one might experience in face-to-face interaction, social restrictions are lowered, which I then think allows people to express their feelings in more extreme ways. So, I think, these are people’s general feelings; the Internet just becomes a place where they get exacerbated.
Also, I first encountered this xenophobic response not through that post, but through one of my own Facebook friends writing the status, “America the beautiful in Spanish?” Of course, only mentioning Spanish and not all of the other languages in the commercial tacitly highlights that this is about xenophobia, and specifically against Mexican immigrants. Following the conversation that ensued from this status was also telling as well. Some people thought it was Obama playing politics as usual in pandering to the Latino vote. Of course, Obama had nothing to do with the commercial, but tying these xenophobic sentiments with a man of color – the President – definitely reveals how racism and xenophobia work intimately together.
Another person mentioned that their German ancestors learned English, so immigrants now need to learn English too. Again, we know, it often took generations for earlier European immigrants to learn English when migrating here, and immigrants now are learning English faster than previous immigrant groups. Nonetheless, facts do not matter because xenophobic discourses are often based on using fear to construct an outgroup. The point being that xenophobia runs deep, and it gets used in many ways including those in the post about twitter and elsewhere – but I don’t think any are more extreme than any others as they all perpetuate inequality and are highly problematic.
Maggie Tate:
While they certainly feel extreme, I think the tweets called out by Public Shaming reflect a part of U.S. culture that is more central than extreme. Evidence of this can be seen in the response from conservative pundits, such as Glenn Beck and Todd Starnes, who also tweeted in with their anger towards Coca-Cola. There seemed a sense of betrayal that the corporation would basically endorse immigration reform and gay marriage. Beck and Starnes are spokesmen with very large and devoted audiences, so it would be surprising to me if many of their fans do not share their negative response to the “It’s Beautiful” ad.
As LGBTQnation pointed out, Coca Cola became the first advertiser to feature a gay family in a Super Bowl commercial and GLAAD has praised the ad calling it a “step forward for the advertising industry.” Do you agree with what GLAAD has said?
Brandon Robinson:
I don’t know what a “step forward” means, but it is definitely a change. I think representation is important, especially media representation, as it is such a large part of our life, and the fact that the couple was not just white is also important, especially when homosexuality often gets conflated with whiteness. But I also have to ponder, what are the limits of representation? Like, how do we know they are a gay family? Could they just be straight friends, and the advertisement is re-defining heteronormative masculinity? How do we know that the child in the commercial is their daughter? They do not speak in the advertisement, so what cues are viewers using to read them as gay? And what does that tell us about how we construct and view homosexuality and gay families in U.S. society? Again, I don’t know if it is a “step forward,” but it is a change – a change that raises many more questions for me…
Do you think tumblr accounts such as Public Shaming actually shame these people or do you think it glorifies them?
Maggie Tate:
I guess it does both. While it calls out twitter users that posted xenophobic or racist responses, it also creates a spectacle out of them in a way that sort of empties the whole exchange of any real debate. Firstly, Public Shaming offers very little analysis along with the tweets, but merely points them out with a few glib comments. Secondly, the collection of them as a form of shaming serves as a public place where others can take a moral stance. If you agree with Public Shaming, you can demonstrate that you are the good kind of American by showing disgust towards those who tweeted against the diversity depicted in “It’s Beautiful.” But, this process doesn’t really bring any debate forward about the issue of diversity and the way that it gets understood in U.S. culture.
The conversation remains mired in the “melting pot” vs. “America speaks English” debate, and effectively distracts attention from other important concerns such as those that might question the interests of Coca-Cola in making a commodity out of diversity. We’re left to wonder how it is that a giant transnational corporation like Coca-Cola became the most “progressive” voice in the room. The Public Shaming forum becomes a site for making individual claims to moral positions, but representations like this ad also have to be understood in relation to broader social dynamics. For example, what long-standing role has Coca-Cola played in the colonial expansion of American culture? What business practices do Coca-Cola executives engage in that exploit rather than celebrate differences in the name of profit? What does Coca-Cola have to gain by representing America in this way? Because, gaining is what advertising is all about, after all, and airing an advertisement during the Super Bowl is a large investment.
This post was authored by Megha Arora, a third-year undergraduate student majoring in Math who is also an aspiring sociologist, and co-authored by Eric Borja, a third-year graduate student in the Sociology Department. Eric was Megha’s mentor for the Intellectual Entrepreneurship program, and this post came out of their many discussions regarding social media as a data source.
Introduction
According to the World Bank, there are nearly 2.5 billion Internet users worldwide[1], and according to Facebook’s Investor Relations site[2] there are more than a billion monthly active Facebook users. With more researchers mining social media for data, it is important to explore the scope of such a data source. On November 8, Dr. Shamus Khan of Columbia University visited the Ethnography Lab to deliver a talk on his co-authored article with Colin Jerolmack, entitled Talk is Cheap: Ethnography and the Attitudinal Fallacy.
The premise of the article is simple with important implications for the field of sociology: talk is cheap. Jerolmack and Khan demonstrate that “sociologists routinely proceed to draw conclusions about people’s behaviors based on what they tell us,” committing what Jerolmack and Khan call the attitudinal fallacy. Given the concept of the attitudinal fallacy, can social behavior be deduced from analyzing data pulled from the Internet, specifically social media? In other words, if talk is cheap, are tweets cheaper?
This post is divided into three parts, each answering one of three questions. First, what is social media as a source of data? It is important to think through what kind of data is pulled from social media – is it qualitative or quantitative in nature? Second, are methods utilized to analyze social media, even quantitatively, more like ethnography or demography? A large amount of data can be pulled from social media, but does that mean we must use quantitative methods when analyzing it? Finally, what can social researchers discern from data pulled from social media? Can social behavior be discerned from data pulled from social media?
What is social media as a source of data?
In an instant, a researcher can collect a large number of tweets through social analytic sites such as Topsy, then analyze the data utilizing statistical or computational models, such as agent-based modeling. A number of demographic characteristics can be pulled from public accounts. For instance, a person tweeting or posting a major life event can be recorded and then pulled. These methods can be used to see who is participating in social media, and how. With geocoding, the researcher can spatially understand social networks and trends by pinpointing the location of a specific tweet or hashtag.
Qualitative methods could be utilized to analyze a small subset of tweets. This could involve comparing tweets before and after a specific event to be analyzed, or observing discourse between users. Directly observing people and interactions between people is a form of qualitative research in a new field: the Internet.
Are methods utilized to analyze social media, even quantitatively, more like ethnography or demography?
These methods, though mixed with parts of quantitative and qualitative research, are more similar to ethnography than demography. Demography is used to reveal shifting trends of a given population by analyzing data collected through surveys and censuses. The gaze of the researchers is present whenever a respondent answers a question in a survey or census. In ethnography, people are examined over time in a field. Instead of taking a survey of a respondent’s answer at one point in time, the ethnographer has the advantage of placing what they say in the context of what they do. In the field, the ethnographer can see people “do things” over time and across a multiplicity of contexts. The Internet, then, is a new sort of field.
The Internet as a field, of course, is not physical; but, similar to an ethnographic site, the Internet – specifically its users – can be observed from many perspectives in many different contexts over time. The amount of time you are “in the field” is indefinite because when someone uses the Internet, either through tweeting or posting, this activity is recorded.
On the Internet, people can be observed for as little or as long as necessary, both retroactively and in real time. It is a field in which the observations of this data can be made at any time, and because of the technology now available, data is being collected faster than ever before. Collecting observations where people are not being prompted to answer surveys or interviews and are behaving without recognition of a researcher is much more similar to ethnography than demography. Essentially, the researcher can place what someone says (i.e. what they tweet or post) in the context of what they do.
What can social researchers discern from data pulled from social media?
Within the field of the Internet, data is collected and behavior is observed with mixed methods. Aggregating a large number of tweets and analyzing them statistically uses quantitative methods; however, when observing real people, in whom attitudes and behaviors can differ, when the researcher analyzes and uses that data the methods are also qualitative. These observations of and between people express behaviors because attitudes are expressed when prompted but behaviors are observed. Using the Internet can allow researchers to observe people and interactions both in real time and passed time, within different contexts and from different perspectives, and use qualitative, ethnographical methods to extract behaviors from quantitatively collected and analyzed data.
In conclusion, we claim that social behavior can be deduced through Facebook posts and tweets because what people post/tweet is a close proxy of what they do. Because the users observed are not prompted to answer a series of questions and are instead observed from a relatively outside perspective, the collected data can allow the researcher to observe discrepancies between what people say and do, and provide a more holistic view of social behavior, one similar to ethnography.
Congratulations to Marcos Perez on the award of a full year of NSF support for his dissertation research in Buenos Aires!
The grant will support Marcos’ research on the Piquetero movement in Argentina. His dissertation explores the processes that influence people’s experiences before, during, and after they are involved in collective action. In particular, he seeks to explain why some activists in the movement are able to overcome significant obstacles to participation (becoming, in their words, ‘iron fellows’), while others withdraw as soon as the relative costs and benefits of involvement change.
Kudos on your outstanding success in an extremely competitive grant competition!
Flora’s experiences are part of a wider trend in how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governments are attempting to incorporate women into social and economic development. Many international policymakers have argued that women’s participation in development programs has the potential to alleviate poverty and advance women’s equality. Yet how do these strategies affect the everyday lives of poor women? To answer that question, I conducted participant observation and in-depth interviews with women who have been involved in various NGO and state-led development programs in a village I call Loma Verde in northwest Nicaragua. Women’s tasks within these programs typically involve some combination of village clean-ups, child care, and/or health education and training.
It wasn’t supposed to be a book about violence at all. When Prof. Javier Auyero and his co-author Maria Fernanda Berti (a local school teacher) began conducting research in a poor neighborhood in Buenos Aires called Arquitecto Tucho they thought they’d be writing about environmental contamination, a topic Auyero has written about extensively in the past. But, after two and a half years of fieldwork, they had a completely different story to tell, one that revolves around the many forms of interpersonal violence that are part and parcel of residents’ everyday lives. Last week Auyero spoke about the book, entitled “Violencia en Los Margenes,” at a presentation organized by the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies.
According to Auyero, one of the book’s principal arguments is that interpersonal violence is not merely dyadic, or retaliatory, but rather connected in “chains” or concatenations. In other words, what may begin as an incident between two drug dealers on the street is connected to the violent disciplinary action taken by a mother against her son, or the abuse a man later inflicts on his female partner. In this conceptualization, not only are there many “uses” of violence, these uses are also connected to one another in ways that transcend the typical public/private divide in how violence has been studied by many other scholars.
Hearing Auyero describe these connections between so-called “public” and “private” violence, I was reminded of the fundamental feminist insight that the division between the public and private spheres is an artificial one, a historical construction used to justify and maintain gender hierarchies. This division between public and private has not only been used repeatedly to confine women to the home (where their “proper” roles are supposedly located), but it has also been used to construct hierarchies of violence. For example, “public” forms of violence such as murder, robbery, or gang activity has historically attracted the iron fist of the state, while “private” forms of violence, particularly that which is perpetuated against women and children in the home were, up until the last 30 years or so (Tierney 1982), almost entirely ignored—a classic case of what anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1993) has called the state’s “averted gaze”.
A second argument that Auyero described as central to the book is precisely the role of the state in encouraging the very violence it ostensibly ought to be preventing–or at least punishing. For example, the same state that provides welfare assistance to families is also represented by local police officers who participate in the local drug trade. This suggests a state whose presence is highly contradictory—and through its selective responses to violence in the community may in fact be contributing to the normalization and legitimacy of violence. Thinking “like a state” (Scott 1999) for a moment, what purpose could such a seemingly contradictory stance serve? What is the logic that might explain the state’s action and inaction in this context?
Some recent scholarship on the neoliberal state in the United States argues that the rollback of welfare and the mass incarceration of poor (mostly minority) men are two sides of the same coin: a broader project to “punish the poor” (Wacquant 2009). Is there a similar state project underway in Argentina? Or is the massive increase in violence simply one inevitable result of long term social and economic changes, such as the decreasing access to formal employment and in-migration to the neighborhood? How do these structural conditions relate not only to the increase in violence, but also its interconnected manifestations? These are some of the questions that Auyero hopes to answer—in his next book.
Participants in the Dream 30 crossing look across the border fence to the United States. Courtesy of NIYA.
By Michael Young and Eric Borja
Under the Obama administration, nearly two million people have been deported, with no end in sight. NIYA – the National Immigrant Youth Association – is tired of seeing families ripped apart by these deportations. And on Monday September 30th, the same day the government shutdown occurred, 30 undocumented migrants – the Dream 30 – crossed the US-Mexico border at the Laredo, Texas port of entry. This is the second time the organization has successfully organized such an act of civil disobedience – with the first occurring on Monday July 22, 2013 when 9 undocumented migrants (the Dream 9) crossed the US-Mexico border near the Nogales border patrol station. Since the Dream 9, NIYA has successfully crossed 15 undocumented migrants, but 24 of the Dream 30 remain detained.
Our very own Dr. Michael Young has worked closely with NIYA, and was present during the Dream 30 crossing. Below, we present his op-ed piece on the Dream 30 originally published in the Houston Chronicle on October 3rd:
In the middle of last week, they started to arrive in Nuevo Laredo, across the Texas-Mexico border from Laredo.
By the weekend, there were 34 of them gathered in a Catholic shelter for migrants.
Each had a different story of how they had gotten to this point, but they all shared a dream – actually, more of a desperation – to come home.
From the roof of the shelter, they could see the Rio Grande. On the other side of the river: Home.
For three days, they sat in workshops led by Benito, an organizer for the National Immigrant Youth Alliance. They role-played what would happen on Monday. They told their stories to each other. They cried, they laughed, they bonded.
On Monday morning, they embraced in “a burning ring of fire” and took turns jumping into the center telling the group what they meant to each other. They used the word “love” freely. Standing next to them, I believed they meant and felt those words as intensely as a human can.
The Dream 30. Courtesy of NIYA
Who are these people?
In the way they spoke English, in the way they dressed, in their mannerisms, they were just like the kids at my children’s public school in South Austin. They were mostly 20-somethings, but also a few minors. They were gay, straight, jocks, nerds, junior ROTC, evangelical, Catholic, atheist – all raised in the U.S., all undocumented, brought here as young children by their parents, and all unafraid.
Around noon, they gathered at the central plaza in Nuevo Laredo.
“Was this the place that they (the Zetas) shot the mayor, or was it the sheriff?” “Is this the place where they brought the decapitated heads?” The kids put graduation caps and gowns on – the DREAMer uniform. Benito assembled them in a line. He interspersed the innate leaders with the anxious. He put the strongest one in the middle of the line, building a column that would not break.
One last check: Benito touched each one on their shoulders and looked them in their eyes for a long moment, saying not a word. They were ready.
With four pesos in hand, they walked one block north from the plaza to the pedestrian “Bridge No. 1” linking the two Laredos. They paid their toll on the Mexican side. Mexican soldiers stood by letting them cross without a word, barely a glance.
When they got halfway across, the chants began in a call and response. DREAMers who had gathered on the U.S. side of the bridge chanted, “Undocumented!” The crossers responded, “Unafraid!” They got louder.
Dream 30 group crosses into Laredo, Texas with Bring Them Home banner Photo: Steve Pavey/NIYA
The U.S. Border Patrol agents in boats under the bridge gunned their engines, drowning out the chants for a moment.
A flash of fear spread through the column, but only for a moment. The chants from the U.S. steeled their nerves.
The crowd on the U.S. side called returnees’ names, one by one: “When Javier comes under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back! When Alberto comes under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
They arrived at the U.S. point of entry, where Border Patrol agents stopped them.
The DREAMers’ lawyer presented boxes of documents – petitions for asylum for each young person. The chants continued.
They stood for a half-hour, maybe more, in the Texas heat and then they were taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.
I had never seen such a protest – a brilliant, beautiful and heartbreaking protest. In all my years of studying protests, I know of little to compare it to.
Of course, most Americans know nothing of the day’s event. The news cycle has room for only one big story.
That was Monday.
By the next day, the minors had been released on humanitarian parole along with their parents. But 25 remain in ICE detention, now housed in an El Paso facility.
American kids, back in America, but behind guarded walls dressed in prison jump suits.
Their crime? They went back to Mexico to bury loved ones, to care for sick family members, to finish an education they couldn’t finish here, to follow a parent who couldn’t find work.
What they found there is something we all already know, even if some of us won’t admit it: Mexico is not the home of these kids raised in America.
Now they are home and now they must be set free.
The government may be shut down, but its prisons are still at work jailing kids who just want to come home.
Bring them home.
Some of the Dream 30, as they prepared to cross the border Monday morning. Photo: Steve Pavey/NIYA
To kick off the 2013-2014 academic year, the Power, History and Society Network (PHS) hosted a workshop for Ori Swed. This served as a practice talk for Ori before his anticipated presentation at the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT) at Syracuse University. The event attracted members from the first-year cohort, faculty, undergraduates and the PRC. Ori Swed at Syracuse University.
In this talk, Ori asks sociologists to think more carefully about how they engage and understand history in their work. Through an analysis of Israeli political narratives regarding the resolution of future Israeli-Palestinian statehood, Ori offers an interesting illustration of the symbiotic quality of discourses. Discourse studies show how narratives create and conjure potential conclusions or resolutions to a social problem. However, Ori seeks to look at the other side of this relationship and has developed a theoretical tool which he terms “historical contingency.” By this, Ori means that sociologists should look at how anticipated conclusions influence the narratives produced in the midst of an unresolved problem.
Ori’s project is as much about matters of methodology and theory as it is about discourse. He contends that oftentimes when analyzing social events, assessments are clouded by the outcome or conclusion, which is used as the lens to retroactively understand a course of events. There is a major problem with interpreting events from their culmination, particularly for historians and historical sociologists. This problem occurs because our perspective (or narrative) often changes when we learn the event’s conclusions. A simple example that addresses the psychological aspect of Ori’s point is the tale the “fox and the grapes” (known as “amor fati” or “love of destiny”). The story partly illustrates for us how, upon learning the conclusion of an event, we reinterpret the course of events. For the fox, who is eager to steal some grapes from a nearby vine, the grapes proved inaccessible in the end. Retrospectively, the fox reflects and reassesses the worth of the grapes (“Oh, you weren’t even ripe yet! I don’t need any sour grapes”) and that the branches were beyond reach. So, when we learn of an event’s conclusion, we often try to make sense of it in a way that is linear and not arbitrary.
Throughout his talk, Ori used the events of a basketball game to describe this problem. When we look at the final scoreboard of a game, it is easy to ascribe certain narratives to match the results, which ultimately negate the narratives that once existed. While this may streamline the description or theory presented, it does not account for all of the events that occurred but rather, only those that help sustain the narrative. For those readers who follow the NBA, the case of Michael Jordan presents a perfect example. Before winning his first championship in 1991, Jordan was known as a player who could score many points but also as someone who would never win an NBA championship. Year after year, Jordan would be eliminated from the playoffs, despite his high-scoring performances, reinforcing the narrative of the scoring champion who would never become an NBA champion. However, this changed after he won his first championship. The Jordan narrative was now that he was able to win championships while the previous narrative had been dropped. In this case, Ori would argue that in order to understand the complexities of Jordan’s career, it is important to understand that the narrative surrounding Jordan was not always that of champion, but also that of a good player who could not win a championship.
However, Ori offers advice to the rest of sociology. He states that because the social sciences frequently study historical events as they unfold (events such as the Arab uprisings for example), we must recognize them as contingent and variable. Ori describes in brief how many analytical frameworks, such as rational choice theory, are conclusion-driven. He cites the preeminent debate of “structure versus agency” in sociology to highlight the contingent quality of social life and the trouble scholars have in accounting for it. In short, by keeping in mind that the moments we are interested in are fluid and contingent, sociology can add a layer of nuance that is not readily found in many works. In the end, Ori is implicitly advocating for more rigorous sociology and believes that using historical contingency as a tool can help sociology accomplish this goal.
