Developing Sociological Imagination from an Interactionist Perspective

Sociological imagination is the way in which individuals realize the connection between their own experience of reality and the experiences of society as a whole. This realization allows people to make sense of the world around them. When one applies sociological imagination, they are stripping their own personal experiences from their thoughts to analyze the social world around them. It allows one to understand different perspectives of the world without the narrow lens of personal experience and bias. This is extremely important in modern society. For instance, in politics, it is very important to hold back personal beliefs when it comes to law-making. A politician who refrains from applying her own moral beliefs to her political agenda in attempt to create a better society is practicing the use of sociological imagination. She removes her own personal views of the world in order to see society’s views as a whole, and acts accordingly. In other words, sociological imagination is “taking the role of the other” to gain a wider understanding of a perspective other than one’s own.

Sociological imagination is a concept that was defined in 1959 by American sociologist C. Wright Mills. He described it as an awareness of the relationship between a person’s behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person’s choice and perceptions. It helps us relate our own experiences to others. Sociological imagination can help us understand the difference between personal troubles and public issues by determining if it is a problem in someone’s own history or if it is an issue in the society or culture’s history.

According to Griffiths & et. al (2015), symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. Symbolic interactionism theory focuses on the way individuals communicate and interact with one another, which help them understand their environment and society. An example of symbolic interactionism can be viewed by what kind of mobile phone you have, what car you drive, or where you went to college. These are all types of symbols that our society uses to symbolize a person status or wealth. Another example is the social networking website FaceBook, which can serve as an online platform for users to create and spread their "symbolic" group with like minded individuals that view the world from the same lens.

The sociological imagination is the term Mills uses to describe one’s ability to see things socially. It is the ability to switch perspectives and be able to see the relationship between the two, to understand history and biography within society (Mills 2). Being able to switch between personal troubles and public issues and understanding the difference and relationship of the two plays a huge role in the use of the sociological imagination (Mills 4). Mill’s uses unemployment as an example. In a large city where we have just one person unemployed, we have a personal trouble. You look into the individual to find the reason and solution. If in this city, more than half of the population is unemployed, we have an issue. Looking into each unemployed individual will not help here. We must consider the economic and political institutions of the society (Mills 4). Mills also uses the example of war. The personal trouble may be to survive or finding a way to contribute to the wars end. The causes of the war would be the issue in this situation. Also, an issue, if the war will affect economic, political, family or religious institutions. The sociological imagination enables one to understand the meaning of the larger historical scene.

According to C. Wright Mills (1959), sociological imagination is the ability to appreciate a different (wider) perspective of the self in relation to others and to society than the narrow perspective of the self that comes most naturally to the individual. Today, sociological imagination is a concept that is considered central to the study of sociology and other disciplines such as social psychology because the ability to shift from a personal perspective to a more objective perspective is crucial to understanding other people and to understanding the norms, values, and expectations of other societies that may differ substantially from the society of the researcher or student.

Symbolic interactionism perspective is a theory that is used to study social life. To do this, this theory relies on studying and observing the interactions among people and how they form meanings to things from those interactions. Although, there is much more to this theory than that. Blumer, the man who invented the term symbolic interactionism, presented three premises which help to understand this theory. The first one is, people act a certain way towards things depending on their meaning for that thing. The second premise is that we get meanings from social interaction, so we are taught meanings or we witness them from others. Lastly, the third premise is that meanings are able to change because people have the mental capacity to

Sociological imagination is the study of society on a micro or macro scale. The term was first used by an American sociologist C. wright mills (1916-1962). This unique quality of thinking allows a person or a group to think or feel about society in general around us or in relation to a larger group to emphasize the connection between personal and structural (group) issues or trends. In other words, a sociologist tries to understand why things are the way they are.

What is sociological imagination? According to C. Wright Mills sociological imagination is the ability to see how individual experiences are connected to the larger society. Sociological perspective enables one to grasp connection to history and biography. History is the background and biography is the individual’s specific experiences. C.Wright Mills came up with the idea that in order for one to understand their personal lives the need to look beyond personal experiences and look at larger political, social, and economic issues of others. “It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate

Sociological imagination is the “quality of mind” (Mills, 1959: p. 4) that enables us to look outside our everyday life and see the entire society as we were an outsider with the benefit of acknowledge of human and social behaviour. It allows us to see how society shapes and influences our life experiences. Is the ability to see the general in the particular and to “defamiliarise the familiar” (Bauman 1990: p. 15). According to C. Wright Mills, it “enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals” (Mills, 1959: p. 5). These

According to C. Wright Mills, the sociological imagination is when an individual views his society as the potential cause for his daily successes and failures. Individuals often tend to view their personal issues as social problems and try to connect their individual experiences with the workings of society. Mills believes that this is the way for individuals to gain an understanding of their personal dilemmas. The sociological imagination helps people connect their own problems with public problems and their history. In order for an individual to figure out the causes of their problems, they first have to be able to understand the causes of the problems in the society in which they are living in. The sociological imagination tries to

The concept of “sociological imagination” is one that can be explained many different ways. A simple way to think of the sociological imagination is to see it as a way a person thinks, where they know that what they do from day to day in their private lives (like the choices they make), are sometimes influenced by the larger environment in which they live (Mills 1959, 1). What C.W. Mills meant by this concept is that it is the ability to “understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals” (1959, 3). In other words, the concept of sociological imagination is the ability to realize that the choices people make and their personal environments are often

The sociological imagination is an idea or a way of thinking that interlocks an individual in a society with the society as a whole. Most people refer to sociology as the study of how people or individuals interact with each other. In order to fully understand sociology and the concept of the sociological imagination as proposed by C. Wright Mills, one has to be able to envision the individual and the society working together to better understand the role each plays in the social order. C. Wright Mills states that "Sociology must make a connection between the individual and the social. It must allow the individual to see the larger context in which his or her life is lived, and in

Sociological imagination is merely the connection between a person and the society. Every person is connected to and influenced by society to a different extent. Some people are completely absorbed in society and feel obligated to keep up with the trends, or else they feel like an outlier. On the other hand, some people do not keep up with the trends of society because they could care less about others opinions. Sociological imagination can be used to show the relationship between both those types of people and the society, and it can be used to explain how people view society from their point of view. When people look at societies from an outsider’s point of view, “rather than only from the perspective of personal experiences and cultural biases” (Schaefer 4), they are able to notice the things that shape and mold their character. The outsider perspective also provides them with a better understanding of themselves by understanding the relationship between them and society.

American sociologist C. Wright Mills first introduced the concept of sociological imagination in 1959. This novel perspective of sociological ideology is defined as a quality of mind that is able to reason and achieve clear connections between what is happening within us to a broader societal view (Mills 1959). In other words, it is the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and our wider society. The concept can further be elaborated to the application of thought to ask sociological questions from familiar routines of daily life. According the Mills, the difference between

In this paper, I will be applying the concept of the sociological imagination to reflect on my life so far as a racialized female in society. I will discuss the impacts of social class, gender, race/ethnicity, and socialization in the settings of the Canadian, Indian, and Indonesian society as necessary. Being a third-culture individual has influenced certain areas of my life greatly, and accordingly, I’d like to analyze my own experiences through a sociological lens. The main purpose of this paper is to share how social contexts, especially socialization, has impacted me.