What Does Socially Contingent Mean?

First, it means that social changes and patterns are not strongly law governed. Outcomes are the result of intersecting chains of causal mechanisms and stochastic happenings, so there is no sense in which outcomes are predetermined or confidently predictable.

What is a social contingency?

Social contingency, namely contingent reactions of other to one's own actions, critically affects attachment formation and the resulting development of self and social cognition (Bowlby, 1969, Feldman, 2007).

What does contingent mean in sociology?

According to a definition in terms of “conjunctural causation,” contingency. “refers to situations in which complex events are determined by variable. constellations of causal factors rather than a single factor or constant set of factors” (Steinmetz 1998, p. 173).