Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sociological Imagination 2022
Sociological Imagination 2022
Historical
Cultural
Structural
Critical
The Sociological Imagination (1)
• C. Wright Mill’s book of the same
name.
• With the sociological imagination we
can see that sociological
understanding takes place at the
intersection of biography and history.
• Biography happens to individuals
‘Estrangement is also intrinsic to sociology: defamiliarizing the familiar, representing the practices of daily life as needing explanation, if not
critique.’ Ruth Levitas (2013) , p. 119.
Puzzle-solving: Why do we give gifts? Keeps fragile relations intact: bonds groups/individuals
• Symbolises you (you give something of yourself)
• It locks the receiver into ties of reciprocity (they must gift back)
• A gift therefore initiates a social relationship (just as acknowledgement of the gift is acceptance of the relationship)
Alice Robb (2013) ‘A Sociologist Studied Christmas Gifts, and Here's What He Learned’, New Republic, 16 December.
Self-made? Recall fugurations…
‘From a sociological standpoint, the answer … is a resounding
NO. After all, one of the basic principles of sociology suggests
that we are social animals living in a social world who are
socially created through our social interaction. It goes without
saying that we are not self-contained individuals living
independently and becoming ourselves through self-reflection,
self-direction, or any other solitary experience.
Rutger Bregman (2018): ‘And why is more than 60% of your income dependent on the country where you just happen to be
born?’ Utopia for Realists and How We Can get There, Bloomsbury: London, p. 14.
Branko Milanovic, ‘Global Inequality: From Class to Location, from Proletarians to Migrants’:
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/827451468315337249/Global-inequality-from-class-to-location-from-proletarians-to-
migrants
The Sociological Imagination: When You are Born Matters