Sociological Imagination

Human life is, by definition, fraught with difficulty and challenge. Often, whatever difficulty an individual experiences feels so dire and unique that it is impossible to imagine that others could experience the same, or indeed, that it could be part of a wider sociological issue. Nevertheless, it is possible, with the "sociological imagination" (Mills, 1959) to create a more contextualized or collective vision of suffering and other social phenomena.

Using sociological imagination, an individual can posiion him- or herself within a certain context, period of time, and sociological environment. Doing this makes the individual awar of othr individuals within the same context or environment, which further enables the person to understand that his or her situation might be, after all, echoed in other households as well.

In doing this, the individual can also identify social and historical forces that has led to the conditions experienced by the individual...
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