The point is to change it

This piece is part of a series of brief interventions based on a roundtable discussion held at the LSE Sociology departmental conference in November 2024. The conference organisers posed the question: Should sociology remain descriptive, or is engaging with normative questions essential to understand social life? The intention was to spark a conversation that would invite a shared reflection on one of sociology’s most enduring and urgent debates. Here, Sara Salem answers.