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What Does Sociological Imagination Mean

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The sociological imagination concept was introduced to us by the famous American Sociologist C. Wright Mills, to describe the ability to “think yourself away from the familiar routines of everyday life.” and view issues from an entirely new perception away from the accustomed daily routines. Mills defined it as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.” sociological imagination is the aptitude to be able see things socially and how they interact and influence our personal life and each other. To have a sociological imagination, we must be able to distant ourselves from the situation and look at the issues we encounter from a different perspective. In short, sociological imagination is all about determining the relationship between …show more content…

The sociological imagination helps us to see the intersection and understand the relationship between society and the individual, and connect our own problems with public problems and their history. It enables us as human to be able to understand where we lay in society, how we affect society and how society affects us, what influence we have in our own life and how society influence us. Per Mills “The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relation between the two within society”.
Mills, differentiate between the personal trouble as things that occur at the individual level, and the public issues that transcend the individual and its causes are beyond personal control. He gave an example, how unemployment shifts from being a personal issue to public issue when there are a high number of unemployed people within a certain population that makes it a public concern(issue) rather than an individual problem, because it affects a whole group of people that can potentially affect policies and the way public funding is

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