The Sociological Imagination

Sociologists talk about the connection between learning to understand and then change society as being the sociological imagination. C. Wright Mills (1916–62), a colorful and controversial professor at New York’s Columbia University who is profiled below, coined this term. The sociological imagination is the ability to see the interrelationships between biography and history, or the connections between our individual lives and larger social forces at work shaping our lives (e.g., racism or political agendas). Mills urged us to understand that our own personal fortunes or troubles (e.g., gain/loss of a job, divorce) must be understood in terms of larger public issues (e.g., the health of the economy, societal changes in the institution of marriage). They cannot be fully understood outside of this social context.

Mills opens his well-known classic The Sociological Imagination by noting how intertwined social forces and personal lives are:

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 man is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a man takes a new heart or goes broke. When wars happen, an insurance salesman becomes a rocket launcher; a store clerk, a radar man; a wife lives alone; a child grows up without a father. Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both. (1959, 3; italics mine)

Without a sociological perspective, we might tend to think of these personal experiences primarily in individual terms. We might locate both the source of a problem and the solution to that problem as lying within individuals. Unemployment, for example, is an individual problem for the unemployed person that may be due to his or her characteristics such as work ethic, job skills, or opportunities. If this person is one of few unemployed in a city, then employment might be secured if these factors change at the individual level: the person decides to get up when the alarm rings and work hard enough to keep a job, gain job training, or move to a different town where there is a demand for their existing skills. However, when the unemployment rate soars and large numbers of people are unemployed, something is clearly amiss in the structure of the society that results in inadequate employment opportunities. Although there will certainly still be lazy or unskilled people among the unemployed, millions of cases of unemployment cannot be explained at these individual levels, and individual solutions will not solve the problem. Working harder, getting more training, or seeking different work venues will not produce jobs when the economy is poor and there are no jobs to be had.

 

 

ТЕКСТ №9

 

Sociology and the Internet

The internet has created a new and interesting concept of sociology and how applied sociology can be used which wasn’t quite perceptible to begin with. When the internet was first conceived it was seen as more of a tool for research and learning. And it has been just that, greatly so for the field of sociology.

However, as advancements were made with internet technology and more people began using it the landscape changed. No longer is the internet just a creation for calculations, it is also a place for mass communication. It is a place for people to gather, to find like-minded and not so like-minded people that they can interact with. Eventually the groups that formed began to be organized into the internet communities that they are today.

This burgeoning world of societies is an amusement park for the science of sociology. It’s a whole new way to look at how we group ourselves and what it is that forms and regulates these groups. It is even more interesting considering that location isn’t one of the boundaries for internet societies and rarely does actual physical interaction occur.

In these new societies we must act as applied sociologists to understand how we are to interact within those communities that are cropping up every day as the internet expands. Analysis is also needed to understand how these internet communities of the virtual world intertwine and affect us in real world societies.

One of the most widely used methods of applied sociology is observation. It is a quick, effective way to gather information about the behavior of a particular society, including those of the internet. Because you won’t be physically gathering behavior cues it is key to concentrate on what is being said and how it is delivered. This is what is known as content analysis in applied sociology. You should have a good idea of the type of community to expect if you know the subject or topic that’s at the core of a website.

However, not until you observe the interaction within the internet community will you understand the norms of the internet society, what’s appropriate opposed to what’s not. This couldn’t be truer for social networking sites like MySpace. These internet phenomenons interlace thousands of people at once, however the rules of stratification that can be found in regular societies still hold true in internet communities.

Within MySpace alone there are dozens of ways to categorize yourself which automatically leads to division within the larger group. This takes the internet society from macro level to meso level which in and of itself changes the social structure. The more you break it down the more significant the changes become between the internet communities leading to different sets of behavioral rules.

 

ТЕКСТ №10