By exercising your sociological imagination, it helps to understand how life is conditioned by social institutions. C. Wright Mill’s defines sociological imagination as the ability to “grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society” (Manza, pg 6, 2013). Essentially, he is saying that this allows a person to take control of their life, instead of accepting the circumstances that are handed to them. By using our sociological imagination, we can understand our experiences, and reshape our perceptions. Each person has their own story (biography), but everyone is influenced by the people who came before them (history) (Manza, pg 6-8, 2013).
To engage our social imagination, we must be willing to ask the hard questions. …show more content…
By labeling people or ideas, it helps people attach meaning to the things around them. Religion, race, gender, social class, status, and sexuality are all constructed individually and culturally. Each of these labels impacts everyone, every day. It may be as simple as recognizing someone as a certain gender, which may impact how they are treated, or how race and religion can create conflicts either small or large (Manza, pg 267-271, 2013).
Race is the one construct that is probably the most destructive of these labels. There are no biological reasons to delineate who is what race and there aren’t any genes or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. But, we are trained from birth to categorize people a certain way. We define a certain race by the color of their skin or the texture and color of their hair and what is considered black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil. Race, of course, is real because we have made it so. Most people have subtle racial biases that they are probably completely unaware of and how we are brought up, our community or our friends dictate how we view others (Manza, pg 267-271, 2013).
It is through sociological imagination that we can start to realize that a social construct is fluid. Ideas and people change over time. We can reshape our perceptions of people and labels by questioning the labels to move past the social constructs that have been created over
To engage our social imagination, we must be willing to ask the hard questions. …show more content…
By labeling people or ideas, it helps people attach meaning to the things around them. Religion, race, gender, social class, status, and sexuality are all constructed individually and culturally. Each of these labels impacts everyone, every day. It may be as simple as recognizing someone as a certain gender, which may impact how they are treated, or how race and religion can create conflicts either small or large (Manza, pg 267-271, 2013).
Race is the one construct that is probably the most destructive of these labels. There are no biological reasons to delineate who is what race and there aren’t any genes or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. But, we are trained from birth to categorize people a certain way. We define a certain race by the color of their skin or the texture and color of their hair and what is considered black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil. Race, of course, is real because we have made it so. Most people have subtle racial biases that they are probably completely unaware of and how we are brought up, our community or our friends dictate how we view others (Manza, pg 267-271, 2013).
It is through sociological imagination that we can start to realize that a social construct is fluid. Ideas and people change over time. We can reshape our perceptions of people and labels by questioning the labels to move past the social constructs that have been created over