Social Imagination Flashcards
An American sociologist who promoted the idea that social scientists should not merely be disinterested observers engaged in research and theory but assert their social responsibility.
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
His theories focused on his observations of the American society during his time specifically the ‘ruling’ or ‘elite’ class
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
Best known for his work– ‘The sociological imagination’ (1959)
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
Published in the year 1959 by Oxford University Press. Considered to be Mills’ most influential work
C. Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination
The vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.
sociological imagination
It is the capacity to see how sociological situations play out due to how people differ in terms of their places in given social or historical circumstances.
sociological imagination
TRUE OR FALSE
In viewing the society, a person must be able to pull away from the situation (seeing society from one perspective– self) and think from an alternative point of view (see how things interact and influence one another.)
TRUE
There should be willingness to view the social world from the ________________.
perspective of others.
The focus on viewing the society should rather be on the ________________ that produce social problems.
social circumstances
In viewing the society, one must have an understanding of the relationship between our particular situation in life and ____________________.
what is happening at a social level
Why focus on the wider scope of society and not just on the self?
- Social conditions affect our personal lives
- Mills believed that every problem faced by an individual has roots in society as a whole and is faced by many others.
e. g. unemployment, broken families, inequality
It refers to private problems of an individual from events in his/ her own life.
Personal Trouble
e.g. getting fired from work, divorce, increasing utility bills
Personal Trouble
These are problems that affect large groups of people and come from the structure (patterns of behavior and relationships) of society
Public Issues
e.g. unemployment, increasing number of couples having divorce
Public Issues
The problem lies within the structures of the society and we realize that we cannot provide ____________ to these issues but instead give _____________ to social problems.
personal solutions; social solutions
TRUE OR FALSE
Sociology helps us gain a better understanding of ourselves and the social world that we belong to.
TRUE
In sociology, the personal and the historical are detached by recasting personal problems as historical ones and historical problems as personal ones.
FALSE
Sociology helps us analyze society deeper by asking these sociological questions:
- What is the structure of society?
- What is the place of society in history?
- What kind of people does society produce?
TRUE OR FALSE
Doing Sociology is a radical undertaking wherein it requires from us a willingness to suspend our own preconceptions, assumptions, and beliefs about the way things are.
TRUE
To have a ________________ means looking at the world sociologically, asking sociological questions and providing sociological answers.
‘sociological imagination’
relates personal troubles and public issues, connecting biography and history in order to give a complete sense of the specific anxieties and crises in our society.
Sociological imagination
relates personal troubles and public issues, connecting biography and history in order to give a complete sense of the specific anxieties and crises in our society
Sociological imagination
is a quality of mind that will help them see what is going on in the world and what may be happening within themselves.
Sociological imagination
