Social Imagination

Have you ever wondered why we slaughter animals on Eid Ul Adha? Some would say it a
tradition, some would say it has Islamic history to it, some would say to feed the poor and some
would even say that it compulsory for every Muslim. All those factors, personal history, Islamic
history, good deed and compulsion in Islam all lead from one small action of you slaughtering
the animal.
This is exactly what sociological imagination teaches us. Sociological imagination gives our
brain the opportunity to think out of the box and to ask ourselves why we do the things we do.
Since all the other sciences teaches us one or two things about this world is different ways,
sociological imagination gives us the platform to understand our social world escaping all the
common-sense concepts that we have derived from our limited social experience.
Social imagination is a method in which we think about individuals and society as a whole
by considering some sociological context.
This concept was introduced by a contemporary sociologist named C. Wright Mills. Mills stated
“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without
understanding both.”

Social Facts
Social facts are considered to be one of the most important discoveries of Emile Durkheim’s in
sociology. He proposed that Social facts are things such as institutions, laws and roles which
exist external to the individuals.
Emile stated; “social facts consist of manner of acting, thinking and feeling external to the
individuals, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they can exercise
control over him.”
Durkheim believed that all the social facts are applicable on collective of
individuals, they can not be reduced to an individual. He further explained that all this
social reality exists but it exists above the level of individuals after all sociology is a study of
“above the individuals.”
Durkheim explained this fact with an example that human life has more importance than the
tiny cells that make it. Same way society has an upper hand over the individual that create it.