Sociological Thinking

Lateral Thinking can be a useful technique to apply to the sociological interpretation of events and ideas, since it is evident that, in the social world, whenever people view something they make certain assumptions about the nature of the event being viewed. In other words, the assumptions we bring into a situation necessarily colour our interpretation and understanding of what we are seeing.

An obvious example here might be the use of two different concepts ("terrorist" and "freedom fighter") to describe the same thing - someone who uses violence to try to achieve certain political aims. From one point of view - the people who are victims of the violence, the act may be seen as one of terrorism (and hence unjustifiable). To the people responsible for inflicting the violence, on the other hand, the act may be seen as justifiable in the context of the political aims being pursued...

In other words, how we view something involves assumptions about how something does or should behave. It follows, therefore, that if we change the assumptions on which our interpretation rests it is possible we will see a different outcome - we will view it differently...

Sociologically, this idea is important since information about the social world is not something that exists in a vacuum; on the contrary, information is produced by individuals and groups in ways that fit with their assumptions about the nature of the social world and, for this reason, we need to be able to think about the nature of the assumptions used (how reasonable are they, for example?) and what would be the effect if we changed those assumptions?

Thus, that which looks self-evident, obvious or unquestionable using one set of assumptions may be not be so evident, obvious or unquestionable using another set of assumptions and to end this section on a sociological example of Lateral Thinking, consider the following:

It is possible, statistically, to demonstrate that children raised in single-parent families are far more likely than children raised in dual-parent families to become criminal adults. If this, on the face of things, is the case then it follows that something about growing-up in a single-parent family seems to turn people into criminal adults. However, it's possible that a propensity towards criminality has little or nothing directly to do with the type of family in which children are raised - it may be that poverty is a far more important factor - and children raised by a single-parent in our society are much more likely to experience childhood poverty...

Thus, if we change the assumption in the above scenario (that family structure is the key to understanding criminality), we may arrive a very different conclusion - which is why the concept of Lateral Thinking will be a useful one to apply in your studies...