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The Sociological Imagination
The term sociological imagination was coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959 to describe the type of insight offered by the discipline of sociology. Mills defined sociological imagination as “...the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.”[1]
It is “the capacity to shift from one perspective to another—from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry.” The individual who applies the sociological imagination, as Anthony Giddens[2] has put it, is one is able to put him/herself away from the familiar routine of his/her own experiences with daily life. The sociological imagination may also be defined as 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. It is a way of thinking about things in society that have led to some sort of outcome, and understanding what causes led to that outcome. Things that shape these outcomes include (but are not limited to), social norms, what people want to gain out of something (their motives for doing something), the social context they are in country, time period, people they associate themselves with). Basically, what we do, who we are and who we become are shaped by all these factors that result in some sort of outcome.
Functionally, the sociological imagination is the ability to see things socially and how they interact and influence each other. To have a sociological imagination, an individual needs to be able to pull him/herself away from the situation and to be able to think from an alternative point of view. It requires us to "think ourselves away from our daily routines and look at them anew". To
The term sociological imagination was coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959 to describe the type of insight offered by the discipline of sociology. Mills defined sociological imagination as “...the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.”[1]
It is “the capacity to shift from one perspective to another—from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry.” The individual who applies the sociological imagination, as Anthony Giddens[2] has put it, is one is able to put him/herself away from the familiar routine of his/her own experiences with daily life. The sociological imagination may also be defined as 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. It is a way of thinking about things in society that have led to some sort of outcome, and understanding what causes led to that outcome. Things that shape these outcomes include (but are not limited to), social norms, what people want to gain out of something (their motives for doing something), the social context they are in country, time period, people they associate themselves with). Basically, what we do, who we are and who we become are shaped by all these factors that result in some sort of outcome.
Functionally, the sociological imagination is the ability to see things socially and how they interact and influence each other. To have a sociological imagination, an individual needs to be able to pull him/herself away from the situation and to be able to think from an alternative point of view. It requires us to "think ourselves away from our daily routines and look at them anew". To