SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

In Sociology, to understand one’s own self, we must understand the relationship between self
and society. The concept of the Sociological Imagination was presented by C. Wright Mills in 1959,
where he states that Sociological Imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the
relations of the two within society – that is its task and its promise. The concept is to understand the
distinction between a person’s troubles and public issues – a t what point such as an unemployment or
trouble finding a job share from a personal problem to a public issue. Sociological Imagination is being
able to distinguish the personal vs. the societal (personal thoughts v. the state of society); your
biography and compare it with history, history of your society. And, you as an individual, you situate
yourself against these huge social structures that are around us, and with these three questions, with
these three juxtapositions (refer to ppt), we are able to distinguish what we can say are our personal
troubles and how it is connected with societal issues (so, troubles vs. issues). *Refer to cartoon, woman
and boy had different understanding of the word “class” – the woman was thinking that that is a
personal question, biographical, and points to the individual’s decision-making. However, because the
boy also recognizes that the question may be understood differently, maybe by using his Sociological
Imagination, he answered it with the idea that the question talks about the societal structure and the
history of people going to Oxford, and the social structure of the education system, as well as the
reward system, that we give in our society. Now, if you look at it to an example similar to us, you guys
are in a more privileged situation than say students from other universities – compare yourselves with,
example, Abra Stat Univ, I’m sure you have a distinct advantage over these students. So, what does that
make you now? You think that the decision of going to UP, the top univ in the country, is just a simple
decision that you know, you get your degree here, after you will leave, and your responsibilities are no
longer there. You have to imagine yourself, you have to use your Sociological Imagination, imagine
yourself as part of a bigger whole. Your decision to go to UP is not just a personal decision, it has an
effect, it has an influence to society – the societal part of your existence. Your biography may be from
the upper class or the lower classes of society, that’s what we have in the university – a whole spectrum
of society as classmates in the same institutions, colleges. Now, you use and recognize that biography
that you have and see the history of the university as a place for people such as you (similarly situated as
you), change or influence the history of our country, or hence the history of our political thought. If you
realize by now that a lot of the presidents of the country where from our University. Now, again, you
also have to see yourself as an individual within the social structure of the university. The university is a
social structure that performs a function in our society; it’s supposed to educate the next cream of the
crop students of the Philippines. Siguro, you already know about that, that you have the pride of being
part of this elite group of students who are admitted in this University through the most rigorous, or one
of the hardest exams in the country – the UPCAT. You become now a part of the elite, or as the boy in
the cartoon said, a part of the ruling class now. That may not be true for UP, but we are now sure that
you guys are part of the elite – you have one of the best educations, not just in Southeast Asia but in the
world.

So, now, with that understanding of yourself and the society where you move about, you now
have to consider the troubles you are experiencing as student, e.g. trouble paying for dorm or trouble
understanding GEs because you did not get the same quality of education in high school, and now you
convert that, those personal troubles, you raise that to the level of societal issues. And you can see that,
say, probably the reason why you’re having troubles with dorms or funds is because of the economic
structure, or economic situation in our country is not conducive/supportive to us finishing our college
education, or maybe the unemployment rate in our country is very high and has a huge impact on our
personal troubles despite the unemployment rate being a public issue, a societal issue.
 According to Mills, there is an intricate relationship between an individual and the society.
Whenever a person does, it’s not just because of their own choice or personal preference. A behavior
such as exercising can be looked at from multiple perspectives, just like when you look at this picture
(refer to geometric shapes slide ppt), you can answer the same question with different answers and in
different place. Say, in this slide, it asks “how many geometric shapes can you see?” there are different
answers because you look at the questions from different perspectives, and that’s good because we can
look at society from multiple/different perspectives. Like for example, in this picture, you can look at
geometric shapes just by the outline of the shapes and photos. For some, they would count the
geometric shapes within the geometric shapes. For some, they would understand that some parts of the
photos are not exactly geometric in the sense that they are just photos of, say, pizza is not very
geometric because it’s a thing. The idea is you can answer things from multiple perspectives depending
on the presuppositions that you have about the meaning of the question. So, for example in exercise
(running). Running can provide health benefits, that’s one way of looking at it. You can also look at it
from the perspective of a social activity; people run together; people enjoy doing fun runs. It can also
increase productivity. If you look at it from a business perspective, running can increase productivity of
employees. So, if you are a businessman, you would like to see that your employees would exercise
more in order for them to be productive because it’s better for your company. It can also inspire
communities to take actions. It creates a sense of community. Exercise can the community what it needs
to be more cohesive. So, a mere example of exercising (jogging) can give you a lot of ways in order for
you to see it – a social activity, a community goal, a business relationship, and a personal activity.

Another example of a personal trouble becoming a public issue, in this case, is obesity. Is obesity
a public issue or a personal trouble? Personal issue, we all need to eat to live and there are many
reasons other than necessity that we gather around food, like bonding. What we eat or how much we
eat is within our personal controls. So, thinking about it it’s a personal trouble or is it? Do we have
personal control over our food consumption? Well, I would say in the Philippines, it is not clear-cut.
Example pag may meeting, sa ibang bansa wala pero sa Pinas it is expected. So, there would food served
in front of you, and at the risk of wasting food, you don’t want to eat it but since you don’t want to
waste food, you end up eating it. So, is that you exercising personal control or is it society trying to
pressure you into partaking of this food that is often unhealthy. And, of course, this kind of culture that
we have tends to contribute to the minds of each Filipino. So, again, our behavior is influenced by
others. In this case if one chooses how to react if one chooses not to eat what others are eating may
also give you pressure to eat more than what you have preferably/decided to have eaten. Example, sa
bday party yung friend ng nanay mo said “o tikman mo tong spaghetti.” And since you don’t want to
disrespect or be rude, you end up eating something you wouldn’t have eaten if you were not in that
situation. So, again, a personal issue (obesity) is influenced by society. Let’s take a step further and ask
ourselves what influences a person becoming obese, and when does a personal problem turns into a
social issue? Well, in 2016, the WHO estimated that at least 2.8 million people around the world die
each year as a result of obesity. And there are many other diseases related to obesity, such as diabetes,
heart-related problems. The level of obesity that we have in our country affects the number of healthy
in our society. In turn, affects society in a much bigger scale, how? Because we spend for these people –
health care. When these people go to, say, PGH, our tax payers’ money are used to take care of these
people. Again, it also affects our society in the level of employment since if people get sick, they’ll be out
of a job, and also affects our economy and our society in general by the level of productivity that we
have. Since if we have a high obesity rate in our country, chances are it will affect the level of
productivity in our country. So, we pay for these obese people and they become unproductive members
of our society. So, a personal problem, whether or not you’re going to eat more despite the size of your
waistline, is affected or influenced by society. And the culture that we have, the culture of food (sabi nga
nila Filipinos love eating), and we really do. We always look for an excuse to have a “handaan.” For some
reason, we just enjoy eating together and celebrating. So, that’s a society putting a pressure on us to eat
more, and when we eat more, chances are a good number of us will also suffer from obesity-related
diseases. Which in turn, impacts our society, as I have mentioned, the public expenditure spent on
taking care of these people, and at the same time the productivity that we have. So, there, from
personal trouble, it becomes a societal issue; and in between is society. And that is what we are trying to
inculcate in our way of thinking everyday – that when we go out, when we investigate something, when
we think about something, by the way that’s what I want you to do constantly (exercise yourself to think
more; be more pensive). Look around you and try to connect your personal situation/trouble with
society by doing this critical thinking by exercising your mind more – you would develop a Sociological
Imagination and a deeper understanding of our society. And when you talk to people, you would have a
deeper understanding of each other’s situations, and we wouldn’t end up just saying “ah Dilawan ka or
DDS ka.” No, we don’t stop there, we try to understand the situation they are in and we try to be critical
at the way we look at them, and may be try to situate ourselves in their shoes; through this exercis, we
will have a more fruitful discussion with each other, more fruitful clashing of ideas.

Additional Facts: socio-economic status and educational attainment of a person, also increases
the likelihood of obesity. So, you can imagine, as a UP student, may likelier be obese than somebody
from Abra State University. Also, adults with partner are more likely to be overweight than those who
are single. So, there, our society influences a person’s behavior; and it becomes a social issue again if the
factor of how much we spend for treatment or healthcare because of obesity. So, a person’s behavior
also contributes to a societal issue.

QUESTION STRUCTURE: what other personal trouble do you have that you can share and relate
it to social factors that contribute to your personal trouble? And how do social structures, like govt,
economy, education, religion, contribute to social problems? And how does Sociological Imagination
help us examine human behavior?

SOCIOLOGY