Let’s go back to what is Society….

Society is a group of people who shape their lives in aggregated and patterned ways that distinguish their group from other groups.

What does society look like?

• Society as an object itself (sui generis)• if society is an object, then it can be examined

closely and analyzed like any other subject (sounds simple isn’t it? We divide it in pieces and explore each piece carefully)

• A sociologist does to society, what a biologist does to a living organism, or a geologist does to a rock:

• Society becomes something scientifically weighted, measured and dissected.

A geologist studying a rock:

Is Society a concrete object after all?

• But, wait…if we dissect this object, we’ll find out that it’s made up of countless other components such as: culture, working class, ethnicity

• These things appear to be sui generis (objects on their own) as well: more phenomena to examine by themselves, hmmm, but wait….

• And these components can be broken down even further into seemly endless bits and pieces

• It gets confusing: overwhelming, almost impossible to imagine we could analyze something so big, with so many parts, the shapes and boundaries are so fluid

Society looks like this painting by Kandinsky:

networks

What can we see?

• If we can’t see the whole of society, what can we see?• We can see people living their lives,

interacting with each other, working, playing, eating, dancing, flirting, lying, fighting, grieving, driving in their cars, ending their lives by own choice, partying, getting married, quarrelling, stealing, loosing their minds…..etc

• There are limitless observable phenomena for us to analyze sociologically that surrounds us

• In fact they are all happening around us right now, every moment of every life

This is what society looks like:

• People actively and collectively shape their lives, organizing their social interactions and relationships to produce a real meaningful world: and they do this in patterned ways that (we as) social scientists can analyze.

• We are curious to analyze the social processes that everyone experiences and how those social processes create the larger society of which we are all a part of

Is sociology a science?

• Natural science is the study of the physical features of nature and the ways in which they interact and change

• Social science is the study of the social features of humans and the ways they interact and change

Positioning sociology among other sciences:

Sociology overlaps with other social sciences, but much of the territory it covers is unique.

Sociology • is the systematic or scientific

study of human society and social behavior, from large scale institutions and mass culture to small groups and individual interaction

Therefore…

SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

Let us awaken your…

The  term  SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION was coined by the 

American sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959 to describe the type of insight 

offered by the discipline of sociology.  Mills defined sociological 

imagination as“...the vivid awareness of the

relationship between experience and the wider society”.

It is “the capacity to shift from one perspective to another”.

The capacity to see how sociological situations play out due to how people differ in terms of their places in given social or historical circumstances. It is a way of thinking about things in society that have led to some sort of outcome, 

and understanding what causes led to that outcome.

Sociological Imagination (1)• A quality of the mind 

that allows us to understand the relationship between our particular situation in life and what is happening at a social level.

• The interplay between the self and the world.

C. Wright Mills (1916 -1962)

Sociological imagination (2)

• The sociological imagination requires that we search for the link between the micro and macro levels of analysis

• Mill’s characterization of sociology as the intersection between biography and history reminds us that the process works in both directions:

• While larger social forces influence individual lives, there are many ways in which our individual lives can affect society as well

Sociology and Common Sense?• Our theories and opinions typically come from ‘common sense’ , 

every day knowledge and experiences. These can be biased and incidental 

• This is not the sociological imagination!• The common sense knowledge, while sometimes accurate, is not 

always reliable, because it rests on commonly held beliefs rather or assumptions than on systematic analysis of facts. 

•Doing sociology is a radical undertaking: it requires from us a willingness to suspend our own pre-conceptions, assumptions and beliefs about the way things are 

How to think like a sociologist and use your sociological imagination:

1. Never assume anything

2. Get ready to be wrong3. Ask even more

questions4. Make the everyday

strange5. Embrace life’s

complexities

http://nortonbooks.typepad.com/everydaysociology/2009/06/how-to-think-like-a-sociologist.html

Proverbs 1:3-5

3 for receiving instruction in prudent behavior, doing what is right and just and fair;

4 for giving prudence to those who are simple,[a] knowledge and discretion to the young

5 let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance

Use your Sociological Imagination…what is going on with these pictures?