Sociological Imagination Perspective

Sociological imagination perspectiveIn this digital age, everyone around the world needs to virtually think in a new perspective away from our daily lives realities in order to gain brilliant insights and knowledge of what really happens around them globally. My perspective about what the great American sociologist C Wrights Mills coined as the sociological imagination lies basically on what privately affects personal lives of individuals in their everyday undertakings, that later reflect their impacts on the wider modern social welfare. This is typical as a result of the factual reality that holds out on social outcomes being determined by man’s self-actions.

What we privately do as individuals in line with our societal norms and motives determines the social issues we encounter on a daily basis and what affects other people in our societal environments.Sociological imaginations help us to formulate frameworks that transform personal uneasiness of individuals focused on explicit troubles and public indifferences into involvement in public issues because, Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding them both comprehensively and trying to work on those problems together. Looking at how the world is currently advancing at an alarming pace, people have to be in the know-how of the social problems affecting their wellbeing and the solutions that they can apply by looking at similar occurrences in the past and the trends which societies were taking in their attempts to solve them.

Social thoughts grind people to learn how every individual in society contributes to the shaping of the society and to the course of its history.Mills was very insightful when he was inoculating this great perspective of sociological imagination because he gave several ideas on how humans can use information by looking at things in another perspective to develop inner reasons of understanding their environments and in the long run, be able to transform themselves. Societies have progressed immensely from old age to the modern times where man has come face to face with the hard-hitting but realistic reality that human survival is only possible if we depend and relate with one another in a positive and healthy manner (Mills, 2010).

Therefore, by applying the social mind, man has increased his interest and ability to grasp occurrences or new happenings around the world while understanding the self. Specifically, this is why, When there is a personal problem on one individual we tend to look at his skills and the immediate opportunities of his environment for a solution but when there is a public issue threatening human survival, we tend to look at the social arrangements/structures of the whole society in the present environment and historically to try and come up with amicable solutions. i.e., a threat posed by nuclear or chemical weapons is dealt with collectively by unified nations and not just one nation because it is a red line that should not be crossed when waging warfare on human lives because it affects the dignity of human life. E.g. the recent bombings in Syria for use of chemical weapons on civilians by the U.S, Britain, and France strengthens this argument to help send a strong message that such acts would be met with a strong response from unified nations because it infringes human rights. If such valiant, punitive and strong measures are not be dealt with collectively, such issues would manifest into serious social problems because such regimes would make it a norm to kill its people using chemicals.

Understanding social changes require looking beyond them by socially imagining that problems can be solved only when the institutions within which we live become more embracing and intricately connected to fully function harmoniously with one another. Moreover, just like an organism where, if one part is affected, the entire organism doesn’t operate at its optimal levels because its systems that are interconnected to function harmoniously are also negatively affected. That is exactly what Wright’s sociological imagination notion tries to explain by symbolizing a society as a unified system made up of different interconnected parts. Therefore, it is imperative for the entire society to function harmoniously at optimal levels for achievements of all social problems to be made possible.With globalization, worldwide social relationships have been intensified and national boundaries made less significant.

Therefore, as a result of these effects, people are relating closely like what is usually experienced or observed in our local villages as a result of the possibilities that have been made possible by technology, and therefore what happens on one part of the world affects everyone globally on a personal level. C Wright Mills saw the digital era as a time when sociological imagination and thinking would be unavoidably and essentially needed to solve human social problems by all means. Globalization technology has made all those possibilities a reality that needs to be embraced by all human species .i.e. terrorism is a global social problem condemned in equal measure worldwide because it displays a high degree of cruelty in people that should be dealt with collectively (Knowles, 2014) Only collectively in our social settings can we act to solve such problems like terror that has effects on people at a personal level before manifesting itself to effects all in the end.

Personal problems with time bring social problems that affect us all in similar ways and are never desirable. Another example of a social problem is poverty. Poverty starts privately before manifesting itself publicly and can lead to the immediate outbreak of diseases, unhealthy living conditions and rampant losses of lives that ultimately affects all of us in our societies. The fact that should be noted is that poverty does not impact people’s lives on a collective level instantly (Wertsch, 2013).  That is why, for us to understand where we are heading, we must appreciate and have the full knowledge of where we are coming from and this is only possible through social imagining and thinking.

Humans more than any other species understand that there are no fixed realities in life, but those realities that keep changing with time as a result of occurring situations that need to be dealt with in unique ways.The quality of mind that is expected from all inhabitants of this modern era where change has been coming at us at a very fast pace should be highly imaginative. Everything in this information era is sophisticated and a great ability to shift from one perspective to another such as the ability to expound things from a family to a national level is called sociological imagination (Wertsch, 2013). This capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to intrinsic features of the human self and seeing the relations between the two is exceptionally imaginative from the human mind.

This special ability is the one required to save humanity from their daily lives depressions of the issues they encounter and fear for their future out of how things keep transpiring out.Unemployment rates rising by the day across nations is an issue that has put the future of world economies and security on parole. With the increased unemployment’s among the young generations of our living societies being a constant problem to nation states, an amicable solution has to be found in terms of new political and economic plans and not on the characters of the unemployed individuals (Fuller, 2006). This is because unemployment effects are experienced by all in the society and not only by one individual because then, insecurity and crimes may arise as a result of the unemployment. If only it was a single unemployed person found in a society, then the solution would be looked at in a personal nature and character of an individual but when the problem affects all people, new policies and strategies have to be put in place to streamline the society.

References

1. Fuller, S. (2006). The new sociological imagination. Sage.Knowles, C., & Sweetman, P. (2014).
2. Picturing the social landscape: Visual methods and the sociological imagination. Routledge.Mills, C. W. (2010).
3. The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.Wertsch, J. V. (2013).
4. Voices of the mind. Harvard University Press.

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