The Sociological Imagination

The Sociological Imagination.

Emily Pulsifer

Sociological:-adjective

1) of, pertaining to, or characteristic of sociology and its methodology

2) dealing with social questions or problems, esp. focusing on cultural and environmental factors rather than on psychological or personal characteristics: a sociological approach to art.

3) organized into a society; social.

Imagination:-noun

1) the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.

2) the product of imagining; a conception or mental creation, often a baseless or fanciful one.

3) ability to face and resolve difficulties; resourcefulness: a job that requires imagination.

Sociological imagination is just what the dictionary tells us, with a little twist. "Dealing with social questions or problems and the ability to face and resolve difficulties." It is a sociological expression illuminating the facts that it enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.

(The history is how a society came to be and how it is changing and still being made today. The biography is the nature of "human nature" in a society, what kind of people live in a particular society.)

It offers suggestion that we as people see our personal problems as social issues, and attempt to identify our own specific experiences with the workings of society.

Social issues are matters that can only be analyzed by aspects and circumstances beyond the control of an individual or immediate social environment.

"For example: a serial murderer who wreaks havoc in an area for a number of months or years is certainly a problem, but this is not a social issue; it is part of the larger social issue of crime." (Wikipedia)

Personal troubles or problems are what an individual struggles with themselves. Their problems can be linked to a social issue but is still able to be overcome by themselves.

The sociological imagination enables people to distinguish between personal troubles and public issues. "For example, people in poverty by this perspective might stop to consider that they are not alone, and rather than blaming themselves should criticize the social forces that directed them into their present condition."

The way people are so caught up in today and their close and personal troubles, they are not able to fully understand the greater sociological patterns related to their private troubles.

"...The individual can understand her/his own experience and gauge her/his own fate only by locating her/himself within her/his period that she/he can know her/his own chances in life only by becoming aware of all those individuals in her/his circumstances. In many ways it is a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one "

This quote may be interrupted by a person that it means the simply fact of standing in someone else's shoes. If you take your own problem and associate it with another's of the same predicament you can see how they are dealing with it, what decisions they made it get there, and how it all unfolded. It can be a terrible lesson to see someone with the same experience deal with it better then yourself, and you know you could have went the same route they had taken to fix it, or deal with it. As well as it can be a magnificent one, seeing as how you