Sociological Imagination Examples

The term "Sociological Imagination" was introduced by C. Wright Mills in 1959. The definition of Sociological imagination from our textbook is “the ability to understand how your own past relates to that of other people, as well as to history in general and societal structures in particular”. In other words, Sociological Imagination is the ability to recognize that an individual's personal troubles are a product of public issues which aren’t always controlled by the individual. This concept can help to provide a better understanding about the current social problems our nation is facing. Sociological imagination helps an individual understand the society in which they live in by placing an individual away from reality and looking beyond the

An example of Sociological Imagination in todays world can be the issue of poverty. Poverty is rapidly growing in the United States day by day. The poverty levels in the last few years have greatly increased. When an issue like this starts to form, Sociological Imagination is a very helpful way to look at the issue to understand it better. One must take the issue of Poverty itself and examine it by putting the issue on two different scales. The two different scales should be “How can poverty be a personal problem?”, and “How can poverty be a social problem?”. After comparing the differences, the issue of poverty should be better understood from a sociological point of view. Poverty can be a personal issue because many people are born into poverty. As a child you can not control where you live and what your parents do for work, so growing up in poverty cannot be controlled in a situation like that. When someone grows up in poverty that’s all they know, so as an adult it is rare too see people in poverty make changes to try and get out of poverty because living in poverty is the norm for them. Poverty can be a vicious cycle for some families that goes from generation to generation. Another personal issue that can lead to poverty is illness and unemployment which puts someone out of work and there is little to no income coming in. Along with these personal issues that I stated there are also many

A Macro-level is defined in our text books as “a wide-scale view of the role of social structures within a society”. A Macro-Level issue that can lead to poverty is how society puts certain people in different levels of the social structure based off things such as their race, gender and religion. This is very unfair and gives certain groups of people a disadvantage of living above poverty because many times these issues cause inequalities in education, employment and income for these marginalized groups of individuals. These people never get a chance to make something of themselves because of how society sees them and classifies them. Two Marco-level solutions to poverty are providing more affordable schooling in areas of poverty so individuals have a better chance at getting an education which will lead to a better job and also improving the economy, so the prices of resources and necessities will become more affordable for