Sociological Imagination
In this essay of mine, I wish to achieve a understanding of the “Sociological Imagination” and try to apply this concept to identifying and understanding unemployment in South Africa in retrospect to the society and the history beneath it. I hope to interlink the personal problems of unemployment to crime, divorce suicide and child abuse in the observations of the work proposed by C. Wright Mills.
The Sociological Imagination in my understanding is the out-of-the-box, intellectual and broader knowledgeable aspect as to how societal problems interact and influence one another and the historical circumstances and contributions towards each personal problem and experience man and women endure with everyday life. What Mills tries to explain, is the constant back-and-forth guillotine motion between a success and disaster in everyday personal, social or public issues we endure. Where a society diminishes, just as quick as they progressed. “ When a society is industrialized, a peasant becomes a worker; a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman. When classes rise or fall, a person is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a person takes new heart or goes broke.” (Mills 1959:1) To understand this concept, you need to break free from personal circumstances and experiences and put things in a much broader and more freely viewed context. Our country, South Africa has endured and suffered many racial complications towards our society, during our Apartheid Era and yet, through those difficulties we found an amelioration. Where different races came together and discarded our governmental imperfections and began walking on the steadfast path of freedom and democracy, where no racial implications were found in the creation of The Rainbow Nation. Whereas using the concept of the Sociological Imagination would allow us to see the progress from our Apartheid disclosure, to notice that the outcome of it was an increase in negative societal
The Sociological Imagination in my understanding is the out-of-the-box, intellectual and broader knowledgeable aspect as to how societal problems interact and influence one another and the historical circumstances and contributions towards each personal problem and experience man and women endure with everyday life. What Mills tries to explain, is the constant back-and-forth guillotine motion between a success and disaster in everyday personal, social or public issues we endure. Where a society diminishes, just as quick as they progressed. “ When a society is industrialized, a peasant becomes a worker; a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman. When classes rise or fall, a person is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a person takes new heart or goes broke.” (Mills 1959:1) To understand this concept, you need to break free from personal circumstances and experiences and put things in a much broader and more freely viewed context. Our country, South Africa has endured and suffered many racial complications towards our society, during our Apartheid Era and yet, through those difficulties we found an amelioration. Where different races came together and discarded our governmental imperfections and began walking on the steadfast path of freedom and democracy, where no racial implications were found in the creation of The Rainbow Nation. Whereas using the concept of the Sociological Imagination would allow us to see the progress from our Apartheid disclosure, to notice that the outcome of it was an increase in negative societal