In Praise of Eventful Sociology: A Remembering of Robin Wagner-Pacifici

Robin Wagner-Pacifici truly was a great sociologist. She contributed in important ways to cultural sociology and sociology of culture, and adjacent fields like political sociology, and the sociologies of collective memory, of war, of violence, as well as general social theory. Her contribution to sociology was that most rare thing, a sui generis and genuinely distinctive way of thinking, researching, and writing, characterised by subtlety and unconventionality. She was, perhaps above all, a highly acute analyst of events, often those involving violence, physical and discursive. Her overall work may be interpreted, as it is here, as offering the case for a deeply eventful sociology. This article briefly sets out, appraises, and praises this sociology as it can be found unfolding over time across her monographs. It argues that, like many of the events her sociology is geared to study, her contribution to the discipline has no definitive ending, and it will continue to be appreciated and activated by connoisseurs of her sociological sensibilities well into the future.