On the Run

I am a sociologist.  Moreover, as I have frequently stated, I love sociology.  Trying to figure out why societies operate as they do has proved a never-ending challenge.  There are so many fascinating puzzles to solve that I am seldom bored.

Unfortunately, today sociology is awash in identity politics.  Too many of my peers fancy themselves social activists.  They believe their primary duty is to save society’s victims from oppression.  Not science, but social reform, sits atop their personal agendas.

The latest example of this phenomenon is a book entitled “On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City.”  An ethnography of criminals attempting to evade capture, it presents their plight in a sympathetic light.  They, not the police, are the heroes of this tale.

The author, Dr. Alice Goffman, spent years living among her subjects.  Not only did she come to identify with them, but there is reason to believe she cooperated in some of their activities.  She may even have been the get-away driver in an attempted murder.

Now many of Professor Goffman’s most telling vignettes have come under critical scrutiny.  They appear never to have happened—or at least not in the way she describes. 

Thus in one case she depicts a twelve year old boy’s life as having been ruined merely by riding in a stolen car.  In another, she portrays the cops as waiting around a hospital maternity ward in order to capture felons with outstanding warrants.

The trouble is that neither the judicial system, nor the police, operates this way.  Hence once this was brought to Goffman’s attention, she backtracked.  Now she alleged that this is the way her subjects viewed the matter, not necessarily the way it was.

Most sociologists are aware of W.I. Thomas’s Dictum.  He argued that if people believe something is real, then it is real in its consequences.  What they think need not be true for it to influence how they behave.

The classic example is Columbus.  Had he believed the world was flat, he might never have set off across the Atlantic.  (Actually his mistaken assumption was that the globe was smaller than it is and therefore that the trip to Asia would have been shorter.)

Our beliefs obviously make a difference.  Even misguided ones, such as that the police revel in hunting down innocent black men, can initiate defensive behavior.  People may, for instance, refuse to cooperate with the cops based on the conviction that they are the enemy.

“Hands up, don’t shoot” didn’t have to be true to fuel multiple riots.  It only had to seem true.

Goffman’s error was presenting the rationalizations of criminals as actual facts.  Thus, were their allegations true, we might want to modify our judicial and police procedures.  But if they weren’t, we ought not credit them as substantiating the victimhood of the perpetrators.

The truth matters.  It must not be confused with self-serving justifications.  If sociologists cannot tell the difference, they should not advertise themselves as social scientists.  Scientists are supposed to be neutral.  Whatever their personal commitments, they must not allow these to contaminate their results.

Our politics have become so acrimonious that many people no longer care about the facts.  All they are concerned about is winning.  This attitude has crippled sociology, but also afflicts those partisans who employ tainted data to shore up their opinions.

We will never solve our social problems as long as this approach prevails.  An insistence that we are right, no matter what, is a prescription for disaster.  We may not like the truth, but to convert it into a moralistic narrative where the bad guys are redefined as good guys is unconscionable.

Amazingly, truth seems to have gone out of fashion—even among scientists.  How then are we to save ourselves?  We may not like reality, but it is what it is and will bite us in the derriere if we are not careful.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University