Sociological Imagination
Imagination is the ability to imagine abstract things without having to understand them before. The ability to imagine something that does not necessarily exist in this complex world. Charles Wright Mills (1959: 11) coined up the term the sociological imagination. And in his book, The Sociological Imagination, he said that “this quality is the ability to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within them selves.”
What is this quality of mind that he claims that society is lack of and is what society needs? The sociological imagination enables people to understand the bigger pictures and insights outside their world. Not literally but metaphorically. It enables people to think themselves away and to take into account how individuals are socially related and that we are simultaneously influencing one another. Is also the ability to think anew of why the norms of our daily lives are constantly occurring. (Mills 1959) Almost as if our lives are nothing but a working machine that produces the same things without stopping and without questioning. To have the sociological imagination is to have the power to look at our selves from the outside to the inside. To see our selves from a different angle. Analyzing and thinking about our actions from a different perspective all together. (Mills 1959)
The imagination is an idea that the individual can understand himself more by becoming aware of those individuals in his circumstances in a certain period of time. There are three major concepts that make up the sociological imagination. The first being the social structure of the world. How societies are arranged and organized to form this dynamic system. And how we as individuals are related whether minute or vast, we are all connected to one another. (Mills 1959) Think of society as dots on a map. Any dot has the ability to connect with any dot in the world. To imagine this
What is this quality of mind that he claims that society is lack of and is what society needs? The sociological imagination enables people to understand the bigger pictures and insights outside their world. Not literally but metaphorically. It enables people to think themselves away and to take into account how individuals are socially related and that we are simultaneously influencing one another. Is also the ability to think anew of why the norms of our daily lives are constantly occurring. (Mills 1959) Almost as if our lives are nothing but a working machine that produces the same things without stopping and without questioning. To have the sociological imagination is to have the power to look at our selves from the outside to the inside. To see our selves from a different angle. Analyzing and thinking about our actions from a different perspective all together. (Mills 1959)
The imagination is an idea that the individual can understand himself more by becoming aware of those individuals in his circumstances in a certain period of time. There are three major concepts that make up the sociological imagination. The first being the social structure of the world. How societies are arranged and organized to form this dynamic system. And how we as individuals are related whether minute or vast, we are all connected to one another. (Mills 1959) Think of society as dots on a map. Any dot has the ability to connect with any dot in the world. To imagine this
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