And now for something completely different

Mattausch, J. (2003). Chance and societal change. The Sociological Review, 51(4), 506-527.

First thing's first - this isn't a developmental article, in the least. I decided to read it to get another take on the whole chance serendipity discussion, and I think with that mission, I/the author was pretty successful. Mattausch uses the example of the British paramountcy in Gujarat as an example of his how chance is an under/not studied factor in social life. In a nutshell, he writes about chance (using the work of scholars like Boudon and Cournot) in this way: two unrelated causal chains that, due to some sort of shared environmental/contextual millieu, combine and create novel results. The example is a roof slate falling on the head of a man walking by during a strong wind gust, if that helps.

All in all, a pretty interesting alternative article. It gives me, in the least, some more papers to read and citations to include.

Score: 6/10 Jetts.