Sociological Imagination Research Paper

942 Words4 Pages
The concept of the “sociological imagination” was introduced by sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959, which is defined by Mills as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.” The sociological imagination is utilized to challenge the trends of sociological thinking and it is used by social scientists by encouraging them to use sociological imagination in order to alter their perspectives on everything that socially exists. Mills also argued about the difference between personal troubles versus public issues. Mills argued that what is frequently defined as a personal trouble is in fact more accurately described as a public issue. The goal of the sociological imagination is to understand the reciprocal…show more content…
According to the Symbolic Interactionist Theory, a condition must be defined or recognized as a social problem for it to be a social problem, which is basically social constructionism. Something that is labeled as problematic in a social context is viewed as a social problem. A social problem is inherently “subjective” if it uses personal, private or an individual point of view. For example, obesity is a social problem because it affects people all around the world. This can be viewed as a subjective social problem because you are labeling people who are obese as their choice to become obese. Your point of view is that it is their own fault for becoming fat because they could exercise and eat healthy instead of becoming obese. This is the subjective part of the social problem because it is your own opinion. However, a social problem can also be “objective” in nature by using an unbiased, neutral, fact-based point of view. For example, many doctors have in fact labeled obesity as a crisis in the US because fast food chains are really cheap and everything in groceries is filled with sugars. Doctors, from an unbiased and objective point of view, state that obesity is a social problem because of the society in which we live in. Based on the Structural-Functionalist Theory, where society is composed of parts that work together, having fatty foods available to everyone makes it easier for people to become obese in the US. And as more people become obese, more of an important issue this social problem
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