What is the “Sociological Imagination”? Illustrate this concept using two topics. Discuss how utilizing this concept is often difficult to accept in the dominant US culture.
Everyone is born with something called imagination. It grants us creativity and lets us conceive life in a new way. In sociology to understand ones self we must understand the relationship between self and society. The notion of the “Sociological Imagination” was presented in 1959 by C. Write Mills by the book of the same title. Mills explained that “ The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise.” The concept is to understand the distinction between a persons troubles …show more content…
For example, exercising can provide health benefits such as lower blood pressure or maintaining a healthy weight. It can be a social activity such as taking a walk with friends or playing for a sports team. At work it will increase your productivity and turn out better for the company. So while exercising benefits the individual it also has a larger purpose in the social world. A person benefits from being surrounded by a community that encourages exercise, and makes it easier for a person to do so, that it also can also have the opposite effect if the person is surrounded by a community that does not encourage exercise. Essentially any personal behavior can be looked at with sociological …show more content…
Or is it a personal trouble? From the personal perspective, we all need to eat. We need to eat or we will die. Although there are other reasons why we eat food besides necessity. Celebrations such as holidays, birthdays,weddings and the Sunday cook-out often involve some type of food. What we eat and how much we eat is within our personal control... So we think; lets say a person belongs to a family that often gets together for large gatherings. At these gatherings there are often fatty foods with no real substitute. No activities such as walking, running or even a friendly family game of football. Over time the family will notice that these gatherings are adding to their waistline. While we could say this is a personal trouble, that person is making a conscious choice on what they put into their body and are in control of what they eat. While this is true to some degree; is it all within someones control? Our behavior is influenced by others and in cases such as family gatherings, how might the family react if one chooses not to eat what others are eating. Social acceptance is important, even among our family. We also tend to like similar foods of the people around us. So we could say we all make personal choices and are responsible for our own behavior, but what we eat, and how we spend our times does not happen in a vacuum. Not that we blame our family for choices, but that
Everyone is born with something called imagination. It grants us creativity and lets us conceive life in a new way. In sociology to understand ones self we must understand the relationship between self and society. The notion of the “Sociological Imagination” was presented in 1959 by C. Write Mills by the book of the same title. Mills explained that “ The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise.” The concept is to understand the distinction between a persons troubles …show more content…
For example, exercising can provide health benefits such as lower blood pressure or maintaining a healthy weight. It can be a social activity such as taking a walk with friends or playing for a sports team. At work it will increase your productivity and turn out better for the company. So while exercising benefits the individual it also has a larger purpose in the social world. A person benefits from being surrounded by a community that encourages exercise, and makes it easier for a person to do so, that it also can also have the opposite effect if the person is surrounded by a community that does not encourage exercise. Essentially any personal behavior can be looked at with sociological …show more content…
Or is it a personal trouble? From the personal perspective, we all need to eat. We need to eat or we will die. Although there are other reasons why we eat food besides necessity. Celebrations such as holidays, birthdays,weddings and the Sunday cook-out often involve some type of food. What we eat and how much we eat is within our personal control... So we think; lets say a person belongs to a family that often gets together for large gatherings. At these gatherings there are often fatty foods with no real substitute. No activities such as walking, running or even a friendly family game of football. Over time the family will notice that these gatherings are adding to their waistline. While we could say this is a personal trouble, that person is making a conscious choice on what they put into their body and are in control of what they eat. While this is true to some degree; is it all within someones control? Our behavior is influenced by others and in cases such as family gatherings, how might the family react if one chooses not to eat what others are eating. Social acceptance is important, even among our family. We also tend to like similar foods of the people around us. So we could say we all make personal choices and are responsible for our own behavior, but what we eat, and how we spend our times does not happen in a vacuum. Not that we blame our family for choices, but that