Reflective Sociology Essay

The last six weeks have challenged my preconceived ideas about sociology and the role that it plays in society in the popular and social media, my values, behaviours and belief system. What I hope to highlight throughout this reflective essay is what I have learnt and how that has shaped my new thought process and reinforced old thought patterns. Week one I learnt about the Sociological imagination where to quote C Wright “The sociological imagination enables us to grasp the connection between history and biography.” (Henslin et al., 2011). Upon further reflection of the reading material in Sociology a down to earth approach there was one particular story that really resonated with me. It was the illustration about expecting parents being given the opportunity to test their unborn baby for certain genetic abnormalities and how the uptake on this opportunity increased from 17% in 1999 to 44% in 2004. In the book “Sociology the Basics” we see that one of the guidelines for creating a sociological Imagination is to be biographical. Between 1999 and 2004 my wife and I tried tirelessly to have a baby trying all sorts of methods from natural, herbal, spiritual to medical. Eventually in 2004 through prayer and IVF we conceived a baby girl. We were asked at the half way mark of the pregnancy if we wanted to take the above mentioned test, but for us it was a no brainer, a combination of our faith, my wife’s history being adopted and the fact that we so desperately wanted to have that child meant that regardless of the result of the test we would be keeping the baby and so based on history and biography decided not to take the test. We now have two healthy, beautiful and somewhat cheeky IVF daughters. In week two we looked at Social Structures (Macrosociological perspective) and Social Interaction (Microsociological perspective) (Henslin et al., 2011), scrolling through Facebook this wee. I was very surprised by how much commentary I found around the subject

Bibliography: Henslin, J, Possamai, A & Possamai-Inesedy, A 2011, Sociology: A Down to Earth Approach, Pearsons Australia, Frenches Forest http://sociology.about.com/od/works/a/Suicide.htm http://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethnicity_vs_Race