Walk down Santa Barbara’s State Street and you can encounter a sociological question in less time than it takes to cross an intersection.

Who belongs in public space? Who gets heard? Who gets housed? Who gets moved along? Who gets to decide what Santa Barbara should become?

Those are not merely political questions. They are sociological questions. And when sociology helps us see serious injustice, I believe we have an obligation to do more than describe it.

That is why I was struck by a recent New York Times article asking whether activism is hurting sociology.

From my perspective, the question gets the relationship backward.

Activism does not inherently undermine sociology. The real threats are bad methods, bad evidence, intellectual dishonesty and ideological conformity.

I learned that at UC Santa Barbara from four extraordinary mentors: Harvey Molotch, Richard Flacks, Don Zimmerman and Richard Appelbaum.

Molotch taught me to see place.

In “History Repeats Itself, But How?,” Molotch’s study of Santa Barbara, he examined how the city’s distinctive character emerged from conflicts over development, oil, growth and preservation.

Santa Barbara did not simply happen. It was made through competing interests and choices about what kind of community we wanted.

Flacks taught me to see movements.

He arrived at UCSB just before the 1970 burning of the Bank of America in Isla Vista. He did not participate in the burning — in fact, he regarded it as a response to escalating violence rather than a positive political act.

But afterward he became deeply involved in building constructive forms of community activism.

His students became organizers in struggles involving growth, housing, homelessness, immigrants’ rights and environmental protection.

Flacks also studied activism itself. He wanted to understand how ordinary people could “jump-start historical change.” For him, studying social movements and participating in democratic change were not contradictory.

Zimmerman taught me to listen for power in ordinary interaction.

His pioneering research with Candace West examined interruptions in male-female conversation. What appears to be an insignificant conversational habit can reveal how gender and power are reproduced in everyday life.

Power isn’t always exercised by presidents, police officers or corporate executives. Sometimes it happens in the middle of a sentence.

Appelbaum taught me to see structures — housing, labor, inequality and political economy. His scholarship and civic engagement helped shape Santa Barbara’s debates over growth and affordability.

His work demonstrated that sociological research can leave the university and enter the democratic life of a community.

Place. Movements. Interaction. Structure.

Those four lessons taught me how to see Santa Barbara.

My own life has taught me something more: sometimes seeing creates an obligation to act. I am a sociologist, a homeless activist and an autoethnographer.

I have experienced homelessness myself. That experience does not make everything I say true. Lived experience is not a substitute for evidence.

But it gives me access to forms of knowledge that cannot be acquired solely by studying homelessness from the outside.

I have seen people treated as though their presence in public space were itself a problem. I have listened to people whose experiences disappear when homelessness is reduced to a statistic. I have experienced institutions from the other side of the desk.

I call this bearing witness.

Autoethnography allows those experiences to become material for sociological inquiry.

My experience generates questions. Research tests those questions. Other people’s experiences challenge my interpretations. Theory helps place individual experiences within larger social patterns.

That, to me, is sociology.

Which brings us to the supposed conflict between activism and objectivity.

Objectivity does not mean having no values. It means being accountable to evidence.

I can believe that every human being deserves dignity and still discover evidence that challenges my assumptions. I can advocate for affordable housing and still acknowledge evidence that a particular housing policy isn’t working. I can oppose homelessness and still ask whether my preferred solution actually reduces it.

In fact, activism can create a heightened obligation to be rigorous. If I want to persuade my neighbors to change something, I have a responsibility to get the facts right.

The alternative is not value-free sociology. There is no such thing.

Every sociologist makes choices about what to study, whose problems deserve attention and which questions are important. Those choices inevitably reflect values.

The issue is not whether values exist. The issue is whether we are transparent about them and disciplined by evidence.

And activism is living your values.

If I discover a grave injustice and have the ability to help eliminate it, why would moral indifference be considered more scholarly than action?

I don’t believe sociology should tell us what political conclusions we must reach. But I do believe sociology should help us see the consequences of the choices we make.

That is the tradition I learned in Santa Barbara.

Molotch taught me to see how we make places. Flacks taught me that ordinary people can make history. Zimmerman taught me to recognize power in everyday interaction. Appelbaum taught me to connect individual lives to larger structures of inequality.

My own experience has taught me that sometimes, after we see those things clearly, we have an obligation to bear witness — and to act.

The Times asks whether activism is hurting sociology. Here in Santa Barbara, I think we should ask a different question:

What happens to sociology when it sees injustice clearly but decides that seeing is enough? For me, that would be the real betrayal of the discipline.

Activism is not the abandonment of sociology. Sometimes, it is sociology living its values.