ABSTRACT
The reigning ethos of sociology as an academic discipline holds that its mission is to determine facts and generalizations about social phenomena, and that as such, the task of making evaluative judgments about those phenomena lie outside its sphere. This chapter introduces the concepts of structural opening and specification of opportunities. This exemplifies the workings of a voluntaristic approach to social diagnosis and criticism: to replace the perception of inexorable structures with that of openings where different paths can be chosen and to envision the multiple options inherent in any such situation. The factor that has derailed Ethiopia's efforts to modernize, an uncritical attachment to alien ideas, can also be addressed through a sort of structural differentiation. Ethiopia has taken unmistakable steps toward many of its modernizing goals—bureaucratized administration, codified legal systems, commercial facilities, modern technologies, academic institutions, scientific research, multicultural equity, transportation and communication, and political integration.
