In a series of posts, Jeff Goldfarb and I have been sketching an outline for the study of the social condition — the predictable dilemmas that haunt social life. We argue that one of the core intellectual missions of sociology is to account for the ways in which social patterns set up these dilemmas that actors experience as crucial for their lives and how they define themselves.

Social life, as anyone who is in the business of living knows, is riddled with ambiguities and contradictions. But these contradictions and dilemmas are not only the stuff tragedies and epics are made of. As importantly, they include materials from which comedy is crafted. If we attend to the structure of humor, we can see that jokes work precisely because they shine light on dilemmas that are built into the social fabric. Thus, one of the core insights of the study of the comic is that it depends on telling two stories at the same time (what Arthur Koestler called “bi-sociation”). Think about the following Jewish Joke:

A Jewish businessman warned his son against marrying a non-Jewish woman, a “shiksa.” The son replied, “But she’s converting to Judaism.” “It doesn’t matter,” the old man said. “A shiksa will cause problems.” After the wedding, the father called the son, who was in business with him, and asked him why he was not at work. “It’s Shabbos,” the son replied. The father was surprised: “But we always work on Saturday. It’s our busiest day.” “I won’t work anymore on Saturday,” the son insisted, “because my wife wants us to go to shul [synagogue] on Shabbos.” “See,” the father says. “I told you marrying a shiksa would cause problems.”

The structure of this joke, like that of most others, is the intertwining and surprising juxtaposition of two stories are told within it at the same time. One narrative is about a Jew “marrying out” and the anxieties and bigotries that “marrying out” entails for many Jewish families—ostensibly, of leaving one’s religion and ethnic group. The second, however, subverts this narrative: It is precisely by taking religion seriously that the “shiksa” causes problems.

Moreover, it is not only that the joke condenses the two narratives. The first way in which jokes are linked to the social condition is that for the joke to actually be funny it needs to resonate with how people experience their world. The reason a joke is funny, as anthropologist Mary Douglas once put it, is because “there is a joke in the structure.” The structure of humor thus brings to the surface a tension that exists in people’s lives. If the joke above is funny, it is precisely because many Jewish families exhibit the tension between actively guarding their ethno-religious boundaries while simultaneously not-quite-following the religious edicts that supposedly define Judaism.

Jokes, then, work because they resonate with tensions and experiences that their audiences experience. As philosopher Simon Critchley put it in his study of humor, jokes work through “an oblique phenomenology of the ordinary.” This is why it is so hard to transpose jokes between social contexts—whether in time or in space. Soviet jokes are simply not funny for those who never lived in the Soviet regime; old sitcoms tend to be more puzzling that hilarious.

There is also a second lesson that humor can teach us about the social condition. It is not only that the joke plays on multiple narratives, and that these are condensed. In most jokes, the tension is never completely relieved. Humor does not pretend to provide “answers” for social life. As the punchline above shows, while the serious absurdity of the situation is brought to light, the joke does not (and cannot) offer a solution. There are no easy fixes for the social condition; the dilemmas woven into our social life cannot be simply wished away.

But finally, perhaps the most interesting way in which jokes can illuminate the social condition is found in the very fact that jokes are funny, that they are enjoyable despite the fact that they point to tensions, and despite the fact that these tensions could be quite serious. The joke above is funny (I think, at least) despite the fact that it involves bigotry, group boundaries, and the relationship to the Other. A world without tensions—one in which any situation could be described univocally, as one straightforward narrative—is both a world without humor but also a totalitarian world in the deepest sense of the term; it is a world we would not want to live in. Our ability to laugh at and with our social world requires its tensions. The tensions and dilemmas woven into the social are thus not only the heady material of existential angst; they are the building blocks of laughter.

I am embarking upon a new project, the investigation of the social condition, highlighting dilemmas that are inevitably built into the social fabric, and exploring the ways people work to address them. Some examples:

It is obviously important for a democratic society to provide equal opportunity for all young people. The less privileged should have the advantages of a good education. This is certainly a most fundamental requirement for equal opportunity. On the other hand, it is just as certain that a good society, democratic and otherwise, should encourage and enable parents to provide the best, to present the world as they know and appreciate it, to their children: to read to them, to introduce them to the fine arts and sciences, and to take them on interesting trips, both near and far. But not all parents can do this as effectively, some have the means, some don’t. Democratic education and caring for one’s children are in tension. The social bonds of citizenship and the social bonds of family are necessarily in tension. This tension, in many variations, defines a significant dimension of the social condition.

Another dimension of the social condition was illuminated in a classic lecture, “Politics as a Vocation,” by Max Weber: the tension between what he called the “ethics of responsibility” versus the “ethics of ultimate ends.” We observed an iteration of this tension in the debate about Lincoln, the movie. In politics there is always a tension between getting things done, as Weber would put it, responsibly, and being true to ones principles. Ideally the tension is balanced, as it was portrayed in the film: Lincoln the realist enabled Thaddeus Stephens, the idealist, to realize his ends in less than idealistic ways. A wise politician, Weber maintained, has to know how to balance, ideal with realism. But this tension goes beyond individual judgment and political effectiveness. Establishing the social support to realize ideals is necessary, but sometimes the creation of such supports make it next to impossible for the ideals to be realized. Making sure that educational ideals are realized, for example, equal educational opportunity, requires measurement, but the act of measurement can get in the way of real education. Making sure that funds distributed by an NGO to disaster victims can get in the way of getting the funds to the victims. Most generally, organizing to achieve some end establishes the conditions for those who have their particular interests in the organization itself to pursue their interests. NGOs often provide for a comfortable standard of living for its employees in impoverished parts of the world, sometimes this gets in the way of realizing organizational ends. But this isn’t a new development: Robert Michels described this in the early 20^th century, as “the iron law of oligarchy.” I suggest that we think of this as a dilemma built into the social order of things.

I think one of the most fundamental manifestations of the social condition animates the work of Erving Goffman. He explored the power of the Thomas theorem more intensively than any other social theorist. If people define situations as real, they are real in their consequences. Goffman was particularly interested in how in their expressive behavior people managed to define social reality.

The dilemma arises when people disagree about the reality, are ambivalent about it, or even want to flee from it. A prime example is the concept and apparent reality of race. It’s a social construction, as every college freshman comes to know. It’s a fiction, but a fiction that we cannot ignore, a fiction that we continue to treat as real. becoming a social fact. To pretend it doesn’t matter even as it does, is to flee from enduring social problems. But attending to the problems of race carefully has the unintended consequence of furthering its continued salience in social life. Recognize race and it continues to be real. Ignore race, and it is likely that you will ignore its continued negative effects. Controversies over affirmative action policies revolve around this dilemma of race.

I worry when political actors pretend that the complications of the social condition can be easily overcome, following one formula or another, with negative political consequences. This is what motivates me to explore the topic, why I feel compelled to do so. I am concerned that bad sociology also pretends that these tensions are easily resolved, often with a theoretical slight of hand. I am planning on working on this topic, developing a more adequate approach to the social condition, with my colleague, Iddo Tavory. We will start next semester by integrating the topic into our classes.

I will be teaching an undergraduate seminar on social interaction next semester and a graduate seminar on Erving Goffman. Although I regularly teach these courses, I have now my new special theme in mind. The dilemmas cannot be definitively solved, although schools of thought and political programs often purport to do so. Thus, the courses will present a critique of politics and sociology, along with an outline of a distinctive approach to the discipline.

As I teach these courses, I will be working with Tavory. We have already had some interesting discussions about the social condition and hope to continue them not only, as we already have, over coffee, drinks and meals, but also with our students. We are planning to visit each others classes next semester to this end, bringing students into the discussion.

I am particularly excited about this project. It makes the near end of my sabbatical more bearable. I think sociology can help us make sense of the human comedy and its tragedies; working on this directly with my colleague and our students makes the normal academic life well worth living. And note regular Deliberately Considered readers: this approach to sociology helps explain this magazine’s project of public discussion beyond intellectually gated communities.