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I was researching "multiple marginality," as a cause for social disruption...(and was about to post a Q on that). Multiple Marginality is (I think) when you belong to more than minority group...so in the USA, say if you were gay + Jewish + Asian, for example.

And I found an article from the University of Chicago, MULTIPLE MARGINALITY: A Comparative Framework for Understanding Gangs. But when I see a statement like this one in the abstract for that article, I see red flags going up...

"Based on over thirty-five years of street-level ethnographic investigations, I have learned that street gangs are the offspring of marginalization...The investigations for this analysis were based on a mixed method strategy that included quantitative and qualitative data, especially intensive interviewing, participant observation and the collection of life histories." 

George Bridges, president of Evergreen College, testified to the Washington State Legislature that based on his thirty years' experience in sociology, the way he handled the insurgency was the best possible.

I am not sure I trust either one of these statements now, and I am starting to wonder if "based on my LONG experience" is kinda foggy logic...many centuries of human "experience" with the world being flat didn't make it true...and I'm wondering what others do here...

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Yes, of course, Virginia, long experience at being wrong doesn't make one right, particularly not (as in Bridge's case) if one has built a career in a hermetically-sealed echo chamber of like-minded liberal sociologists, where liberal dogma was probably never questioned. :ermm:

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