What is Sociological Imagination?sociological imagination is an ability's InfoIqGyan
Channel: Info IQ Gyan
Date: 15/01/2023

What is Sociological Imagination?
1 year ago
To put it simply, sociological imagination is an ability to connect personal challenges to larger social issues. However, a simple definition is not enough to explain a modestly complex idea like sociological imagination. What kind of personal challenges or social issues? How do they connect? 

Exploring a brief summary of sociological imagination can help introduce the concept in a more meaningful way; it can also be an important step towards understanding how sociological imagination is useful to the personal and professional lives of those who develop this particular skill.

Exploring The Concept of Sociological Imagination 
The father of sociological imagination, C Wright Mills, founded this field of thinking in the mid-20th century. At the time he wrote, “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” Just the same, it’s also important to put Mills’ theories into context. 

Mills’ contemporaries in sociology tended to focus on understanding systems rather than exploring individual issues. (For example, structural functionalism.) But Mills argued that thinking of society as just a series of systems was not quite accurate. And equally important, it ignored the role of the individual within those systems.

He believed that looking at a balance between systems and the individuals within them was essential to understanding their collective relationship, as well as the social structures that arise out of conflict between various groups. This perspective also helps enable sociologists to do more than observe, but to expose social injustice, and act and change the world.