ANALYSIS OF "THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE" (part 28)

Contingency and Cause

by

Charles Lamson

What caused you to read this blog? That might seem like an easy question, but in fact, it is so hard, that you could never answer it fully. To do so, you would have to say how you became able and willing to read this blog. You would also have to say how reading, writing, and blog publishing came to exist; how this particular blog came to be; how you and I came to be; and how you and this blog came together. All that is more than you could explain.

In everyday life, we do not have to give an account of the universe to explain why we read a blog. Most people are satisfied if we say, "It looked interesting," or "I was bored." Even so, if language and blogs, you and I, and the circumstances that brought this blog into this screen you are viewing had not come into existence, this moment would not be happening. Everything that led to your act of reading these words is part of what caused it. No one could ever identify all these causes, each of which has causes of its own.

Here is another question: What causes colds? You might say, "People catch what we call a 'cold' when their mucous membranes become infected with a rhinovirus." That answer is right, as far as it goes. The real situation however is more complicated.

For one thing, rhinoviruses do not always cause trouble. The immune system normally keeps them in check, unless it is weakened for some reason. So we must think about what causes the immune system to weaken. We must also think about how the environment allows rhinoviruses to survive long enough to be transmitted, and about what kind of behavior transmits them. A good explanation of why people catch colds would thus have to go beyond "bug gets into body, body comes down with cold."

Part of being sociologically mindful is recognizing that all explanations are incomplete in trying to say what causes an event, a behavior, or a trend. We always face the impossibility of saying how all the enabling conditions came about so we have no choice but to take most of these conditions for granted and settle for incomplete explanations of why things happen as they do such explanations are still useful of course you do not need to know how an engine works to know that if you turn the key it will usually cause the car to start.

In trying to make sense of the social world, we often try to see what causes things to happen as they do. We do not usually care if our explanations are incomplete, as long as they make the world more predictable and controllable. Sometimes our explanations seem so good, that we think we have found the One True Cause of an event. But this is an illusion. Events are not the result of a single cause, but of a web of causes. Circumstances must come together in just the right way, at just the right time to make things happen as they do. All events (in other words) are contingent, meaning that they are the result of a unique mix of circumstances and actions.

Perhaps the example of the 1991 Persian Gulf War can make this idea of contingency more concrete. Looking back, can we say what caused the gulf war? Did it have one true cause? If you read about the war, you will find that each of these has been suggested as its primary cause:

• George Bush, then president of the United States ordered the use of military force against Iraq, because he wanted to raise his standing in the polls, distract attention from the nation's economic problems, make his place in history, and prove he was a man.
• The profits of U.S. oil corporations were threatened by Iraq's takeover of Kuwait. And so, George Bush, acting on behalf of those corporations, used violence to put Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, back in his place and restore U.S. control of the Middle East.
• Capitalists in developed countries profit by exploiting less-developed countries for their labor and raw materials, and so any attempts by these countries to get free from capitalist control cannot be tolerated; the United States thus crushed Iraq to show leaders of other less-developed countries what would happen if they got out of line.
• The Gulf War was fought to help justify the U.S. government's continuing huge expenditures on the military, by showing that even if the Soviet Union was no longer a serious threat, a strong military is still necessary to put down ruffians like Saddam Hussein.

Is one of these the true cause of the gulf war? Each is plausible, and they are not incompatible. They could all be true. Perhaps you can think of other causes. What is important to see is that each of these explanations leaves much unsaid. Being sociologically mindful, we should pause to consider what is left out.

Nothing is said, for instance, about why the U.S. economy depends on imported oil; why people in the United States feel entitled to have access to the natural resources of other countries; why or how Saddam Hussein happened to have a well equipped army at his disposal; why U.S. soldiers were willing to follow orders to kill people in another country; or why most U.S. citizens were willing to accept this violence being done by their government.

The gulf war was contingent upon these conditions. If conditions had been different, the war could not have happened. We should thus be wary of any claims that the war had only one cause. The same principal applies to all events large and small. Being sociologically mindful, we will avoid rushing to identify a single cause, and instead try to see how events emerge out of a combination of circumstances and actions.

In Conclusion

We can still try to determine if certain actions or conditions - like a virus getting intro the body, an idea getting into minds, or weapons getting into the hands of soldiers - are necessary to make something happen. Even so, we must see that what ultimately happens depends on many other circumstances, some stable and some rapidly changing, coming together in just the right way. If we are mindful of how this swirl of contingencies can sometimes give rise to terrible events, we will pay attention to how things are shaping up at any given time.

*SOURCE: THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE, 2ND EDITION, 2001, MICHAEL SCHWALBE, PGS. 115-117*

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