PrepTest 114, Section 3, Question 16

Working the answers

• A

  Abrams has already said people make history. Nothing establishes that this method is the only way to know that with certainty. The procedure develops our understanding of the interaction; it isn't presented as the exclusive basis for recognizing individual influence at all.

• B

  The supposed standard assumption that history and individual agency have little connection isn't stated. This adds a new opponent, as well as making the method the only way to answer that opponent.

• C

  We aren't told the discipline faces dismissal as indefensible. Nor is agreement among its practitioners introduced as the condition for avoiding that threat. This turns the ending toward a reputational problem we haven't discussed.

• D

  One-sided approaches are mentioned, but neglected issues that sociologists have chosen to ignore are not. The aim is a fuller account of mutual influence, not a catalog of deliberately avoided subjects.

• E
  Correct

  The structure is meant to capture the different aspects of this reciprocal relationship (paragraph 3). Examining the event, its conditions, its agent, and its consequences helps show how people act within history and change it. That explains the value of the method we've just been given.