Midterm- Sociological Imagination Flashcards
who is august comte and what is his contribution to sociological thinking?
French philosopher known as the founder of school of thought called Positivism
Stated that science is the most developed and productive mechanism of Truth
The study of humans & society should be an evidence-based science and not “armchair philosophy”
what is a social fact
Emergent phenomena: crowds exhibit behaviors different from individuals
External to the individual, form of coercion
Collective beliefs/ideas (religion, traditions, culture)
Social morphologies (demographic changes, births, pattern of deaths, ecology, economy)
sociological imagination: confirmation bias
Tending to seek out and remember information that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs or ideas
sociological imagination: cultivate creativity
humans and the world we created are more complex than we often assume
sociological imagination: skeptical stance
Take a skeptical stance, especially towards simplistic answers or explanations to complex phenomena
what is a norm
the way you and others are supposed
to behave that you take for granted and
probably never think about
what is a value
the moral commitments that animate
our behavior, guide our judgments of others,
and which influence our beliefs
what is a belief
Things that you think are true of the
world and that come to shape your entire
worldview
Most commonly are religious beliefs,
beliefs about human nature and how the world
should be
The more deeply we hold a belief,
the less we question it
Mills- The Sociological Imagination main concept
The sociological imagination refers to the ability to understand the relationship between individual experiences and larger social forces
It involves seeing the connection between personal troubles and public issues
Troubles vs. Problems- Main concept
Personal troubles: a problem affecting individuals that the affected individual, as well as other members of society, typically blame on the individual’s own personal and moral failings. Ex: eating disorders, divorce, and unemployment.
Public issues: source lies in the social structure and culture of a society, refers to social problems affecting many individuals. Problems in society thus help account for problems that individuals experience.
Mills felt that many problems usually considered private troubles are best understood as public issues, and he coined the term sociological imagination to refer to the ability to appreciate the structural basis for individual problems.
Mills- 3 types of questions main concept
- what is the structure of society? This question wants to know how different groups in a society are related.
- what is the place of society in history? This question wants to figure out how societies change across time and how our society today is related to societies of the past.
- what kinds of people does society produce? This question seeks to describe how people’s personalities and moods—their beliefs and values—are also shaped by the social world in which they live.
Social construction
Concept that exists not in objective reality, but as a result of human interaction
It exists because humans agree that it exists
socialization
the process of learning the dominant cultural norms, values, and beliefs of your society, typically learned in childhood but can be re-learned throughout life
social order
predetermined set of norms, values, beliefs and patterns of conduct for individuals. These aggregate into systems of law, politics, and economics
***it’s tacit: things we don’t consciously understand that people create these themselves based on their biases, understandings, and assumptions
structure vs. agency
Structure:
large-scale forces that shape our social order
(norms, beliefs and values) and guide
or even determine our behavior. These forces may be explicit and codified like the legal system or nearly invisible and implicit like our culture
Agency:
Capacity for creative or original action, behavior, or thoughts even within our social structures or in contradiction to them.
