Relating Concepts of Sociology to my Personal Life

2086 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: importance of sociology in daily life

In today’s society, it is easy to spot someone blaming themselves for the occurrence of their personal life problems. For example, a single-mother may blame herself for not being able to support her children well due to a shortage of money and unavailability to find a decent job. Another could be a newly wed couple having daily arguments that may lead to their divorce, or women who are facing difficulties perceiving their housekeeping responsibilities and wanting to become something more than just a homemaker. These various private tensions may seem very personal. These dilemmas are all related to a bigger world called society and this is known as the sociological imagination. Sociological imagination suggests that people look at their own personal troubles as social issues and, in general try to connect their own individual encounters with the workings of society. The personal problems are closely related to societal issues such as unemployment, marriage, war and even the city life where the private troubles and the public issues become clearly apparent. With the understanding of the sociological imagination, I began to notice the daily choices I make, the classes I attend, the way I was raised by my parents, the group of people I choose to hang out with, the things I like to converse about with others are all somehow affected by public issues and what society tends to make us believe is right. There are many areas in my life where I feel that I am greatly affected by various sociological theories such as events dealing with gender and sexuality, family and culture, ethnicity and race, and social class and work. Even though our country supports equality in gender, differences still exist. This issue of gender and sexuality of our society has had one of the biggest impacts in my life since I was raised with five brothers. Since birth, I was immediately perceived by my parents as my gender role of girl and daughter. My brothers were given action figures, cars, and guns to play with. I was given the traditional girl toys Barbies, baby dolls and kitchen sets. Of course, I enjoyed my traditional girl toys but it might have been nice to have a choice and be able to have the same toys as my brothers to play with. I eventually concluded that I should be satisfied with whatever toys were given to me by my parents.

Show More
Related

  • Gender Roles In The Walmart Supercenter At The Walmart Store

    1330 Words  | 3 Pages

    I will not impose “gender specific” toys on them or tell them that it is not acceptable for a boy to play with a baby doll or tell my future daughter that it is not allowed for her to pretend sword fight. My children will be able to decide what they like and what they do not like and I will not allow anyone to decide that for them. This assignment has definitely opened my eyes to the market that is out there stereotyping children without much notice. Taking time to actually look into what is being done with toys and society with children has broadened my understanding and awareness of the impending problem that children are being faced with. I hope that one day we will see an end to gender stereotyping so that my future children will not be forced to feel out of place if they do not identify with a specific feeling or emotion that a boy should have or a girl should have. It sickens me and breaks my heart that things so minuscule such as toys can have such a negative effect on lives, especially on such a young children. This ideology of gender segregation should not be supported or further produced because it is harmful to the children that are directly or indirectly being affected by

    Read More

  • Exploring Gender Expectations in Today's Society

    1196 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the day they are born, parents play a huge role in socializing gender by giving their children toys to play with based on their gender. Boys are expected to like and play with toys such as trucks, cars, trains, and gross things like bugs and mud. Girls are expected to like anything pink, dolls, kitchen sets, and playing tea party with their dolls and stuffed animals. It is acceptable for girls to occasionally play with toys meant for boys but not vise versa. As they grow into their teenage years they are taught to like more things based on one’s gender. Kevin Macdonald writes, “boys like guns, boxing, wrestling and karate, team sports, and fixing things. Girls prefer dolls, sewing, cooking, dancing, and looking after younger children.” In their teenage years girls are not really suppose to like boy things and if they do they are seen as a tomboy. Through time though it has become more acceptable for girls to like a few guy things such as sports. As they become adults their expectations on what they like stays pretty much the same as teenage years. Men like things such as sports, cars, outdoor activities like hunting and fishing, and work. Women are expected to like things such as fashion (makeup, nails, clothes, shoes, etc.), cooking or baking, and doing

    Read More

  • Toys Case Study

    1072 Words  | 3 Pages

    The toy industry makes it seem acceptable that only certain toys are suitable for one or the other gender by marketing them as such. For a parent to differ, it would mean stepping out of the box, possibly alienating their child from others with a choice that might seem odd. Rather than making their child feel or appear awkward, parents continue to support the gender biases found in toys, thereby promoting gender socialization. It is important however, that parents, as role models and consumers, must be diligent in their choices and make decisions that will help either negate or balance out gender biases in

    Read More

  • Sociological Imagination In Sociology

    1571 Words  | 4 Pages

    The sociological textbook definition of the sociological imagination is “the ability to grasp the relationship between individual lives and the larger social forces that help to shape them.” However like most things, the sociological imagination is a bigger and more important concept than its definition. The sociological imagination allows one to have both a third-person and first-person view of the world. Being able to look through someone’s eyes while simultaneously knowing the forces that shape what they see and do, gives one a much greater understanding of someone’s life. That’s what the sociological imagination allows us to do, gain a better understanding. Whether through economic, religious, racial, or other social forces, the sociological

    Read More

  • The Disney Store Article: The Gender Marketing Of Toys

    1345 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many of the toys I had consisted of pink frilly things that were given to me by my parents or other adults. My dolls were Bratz dolls that were full of different outfits and makeup, teaching me to worry about the way I looked. My animal related toys consisted of little plastic horses and farm animals that were always in “gender neutral colors”, they always came in a red pack and any accessories were always bright and yellow or green. While when I had a gender-neutral toy, a leapfrog leader, that had a distinction of being a girls because of the case being pink and purple, not in in of the “gender neutral” color categories. My sports toys were the same, my soccer balls and basket balls were not neural colors, but pink or purple,. I also played with “boy toys” like cars, footballs, baseballs, however none of these things were ever bought for me. If I asked for these “boy toys” I was told that they were for boys not for girls, experiencing cultural competence, because no adult in my life thought buying a girl those types of toys were

    Read More

  • Sociological Imagination Concept as it Relates to Domestic Violence

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    This is the foundation of the Sociological Imagination Concept. According to C. Wright Mills, sociological imagination is developed when we can place personal problems in a social situation or environment such that they are no longer viewed solely as individual or personal problems, but instead as social problems. That is problems that are shared by enough peop...

    Read More

  • Sociological Imagination

    750 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sociological imagination is the understanding of relationships between self and society. Anything that happens in a person’s life is an effect of something that has happened in society. Understanding sociological imagination will allow people to see how society can shape a person’s life. People feel that their failures are their own fault when in reality it is caused by what happens in society. If Americans understood sociological imagination they would have a better understanding as to why something happens to them, and how to fix that problem. If they understood why things were happening, from a societal viewpoint, there would look at situations in a different light and then they would hopefully be able

    Read More

  • Obesity as a Social Issue

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    The sociological imagination according to C. Wright Mills is an idea which gives an individual the ability to understand the connection between a problem and the history of that problem (Mills, 2000).He states that the sociological imagination is “A quality of mind that will help use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves” Mills (2000:5). The distinct different between the two terms lies upon the ideology that troubles are problems which are personal and directly affect an individual and their milieu (Mills, 2000)rather than issues which are “to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life “. Furthermore, the sociological imagination in a nutshell is a way of thinking which links the events that occur in people’s everyday lives to more than their individual surroundings and individual effects.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Sociological Factors On My Life

    1987 Words  | 4 Pages

    Similar to everyone else in the world, many sociological forces have greatly impacted my life and shaped the person that I am today. Throughout Sociology 110, learning what elements in the population’s lives affect the way they live their lives allowed me to consider what has personally affected my own. The person I am today can attribute the sociological forces such my gender, my not-so close knit family, my family’s low socioeconomic status, and sexism in the family. There are plenty of other sociological factors that have considerably rendered my person, however, I believe that the ones I mentioned are the most important factors that manipulated not only how I live my life, but me as a person as well, into my current self.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Why Boys Don T Play With Doll

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Katha Pollitt’s essay “Why Boys Don’t Play with Dolls,” she explains the differences between the genders and she argues how feminist movements are hardly appreciated. Pollitt further demonstrates that women’s have the same power as any men have, but society doesn’t let women get higher than men. Pollitt explains that, “It’s twenty-eight years since the founding of NOW, and boys still like trucks and girls still like dolls” (544). From here, we can infer that the author is comparing the activities of boys and girls, and their choices of toys. Since, I am able to read and see the World, I saw that all the time that boys are more rivalry. There have always been presumptions in society that boys are very outgoing and bold, on the other hand, whereas girls are a little laid back sometimes. Girls play quietly and with non-hunting objects. However, boys always make noises. In addition, Pollitt keeps using the word “feminism” throughout her essay, and talks about how women and men should have equal rights. For example girls can do the same things as boys can do or vice versa. I can relate to this story as I grew up with two brothers who always played with cars, trucks, and other toys like dragons, but I was expected to stay away from their things and go play with my, so called, girly stuff.

    Read More

  • Sociological Imagination Reflection Paper

    1373 Words  | 3 Pages

    C. Wright Mills describes the sociological imagination as a way of recognizing the pervasiveness of social influences when understanding human behaviours and social patterns. It helps people understand personal problems by understanding them in a broader context (class lecture, September 22, 2015). The sociological imagination is the key to understanding how societies control and change their members, and how societies are changed by the actions of their members (Curtis & Tepperman, 2006). Some of these sociological concepts that have influence on a person’s life include: gender, class, race/ethnicity, education, inequality, technology, and many more. In this essay I am going to use the sociological imagination to analyze how my personal life has been influenced by these larger social forces particular to the time and place in which I have grown up. More specifically, I am going to look at social forces such as class, gender,

    Read More

  • Poverty: Using Sociological Imagination By C. W Mills

    1582 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sociological imagination is a concept by C. W Mills, who defines it as a situation where individuals become aware of their personal experiences, but choose to think away from their everyday life and routines to viewing their actions and situations from a 3rd party’s perspective. (Mills, 2000) This can also be described as the realization of how personal experiences relate to the wider society. Miller continues to say that men in this life are living, feeling like their everyday life is made up of traps which their daily worlds cannot help overcoming these troubles in the traps. This is the point where he brings the idea that human beings live in circles or private orbits where our

    Read More

  • Sociology and Common Sense

    1536 Words  | 4 Pages

    In 1959, American sociologist Charles Wright Mills wrote his influential book 'The Sociological Imagination'. In the book, Mills proposed that possibly the most assistive part of his sociological imagination theory was differentiating problems within society between 'personal troubles of the milieux' and 'public issues of social structure'. In his view, 'personal troubles' were individualistic and where 'an individual's character and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware'. By contrast, his thoughts on 'public issues' were that they were more general problems, out with the scope of an individual, and would affect more than just one person. He used the example of unemployment to explain his sociological viewpoint further. H...

    Read More

  • Sociology: The Study Of Sociology In Everyday Life

    1100 Words  | 3 Pages

    Before I started taking the course of sociology I wasn’t really expecting to learn anything, it was just supposed to be an easy online class. However, that was not the case. It challenged my mind. I started to see sociology all around me, starting with family, then friends, and how I see things overall in general. The fact that we have an everyday life in which there are patterns in ways of living is what sets a platform for a sociological breakdown and for being a part in what we do. A better way of understanding ourselves. We use sociology in many ways every day. One central and important study of sociology is the study of everyday social life. Everyday life and sociology are definitely two different words and situations, but they tend to hold a close relationship. While sociology is the study of the human interaction, everyday life consists of everyday human interaction. Everyday life is filled by human beings interacting with one another, ideas, and emotions. Sociology studies the interactions with all of these and shows how mere interaction resulted in things such as ideas. For an example, race and ethnicity are important concepts in the field of sociology and are ones that are studied a great deal. Race plays a large role in everyday human interactions and sociologists want to study how, why, and what the outcomes are of these interactions. Current sociological theories focus mainly on how there are many different factors in our everyday items of life, like movies. We were assigned a final to write a review for a movie in sociological form. The movie that was on the list that also happened to be one of my favorite movies, Toy Story. When we were assigned the assignment, I never thought about how in-depth it was with sociol...

    Read More

  • Sociology and Psychology

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sociology is a study of society social life, social change, and social causes and consequences of human behaviour and allows us to gain an understanding of the structure and dynamics of today’s society, looking at the interlinking links patterns of human behaviour. Sociology looks at the in which social structure and institutions affect our everyday life. Sociological imagination was founded by C. Wright mills in the 1950`s it is an overall understanding of that some of the things that happen in society may lead to a particular outcome. Mills said it is “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and wider society.” sociological imagination can also be defined as the ability to look at how sociological situations can unfold due to how everyone is different. The way we behave is shaped by the situation that we find ourselves in, the values and norms that we have and the way that other members of society act around us. It is also a way of thinking about how things in society have led to a particular outcome, and understanding of what led to that specific outcome. Sociological imagination is an ability to look at things socially and how they interact and influence each other gaining an understanding of different cultures and class systems.

    Read More

More about Relating Concepts of Sociology to my Personal Life

Open Document