The Myth of the Independent Variable: Reconceptualizing Class, Gender, Race, and Age as Subcultural Processes

What is it about?

Although social class, religion, gender, ethnicity and age are often treated as independent variables (e.g., factors, forces, structures) and invoked as causal explanations for various outcomes, this paper approaches these constructs in more distinctive, humanly-engaged terms. Rather than representing forces that almost mysteriously impose themselves on people, these constructs are to be understood more fundamentally as the products and processes of human group life. We are not denying the linkages of social categories with other aspects of community life but contend that these correlates represent comparatively superficial reflections of the much broader underlying sets of processes that characterize social life. Indeed, we argue that it is these sets of humanly engaged social processes rather than correlational research that constitute the more authentic subject matter of the social sciences.

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