Examples Of Social Imagination

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Recommended: Develop social imagination

Camille Asknes
SOC 100 5/25/17

According to the reading, social imagination is “the ability to see the connections between our personal experiences and the larger forces of history." Furthermore it helps us ponder our own regular habits or customs, which allows us to think about them as if they were not familiar to us. Social imagination can be used in many instances; to explain why people take their shoes off as soon as they walk into a house, or why people prepare foods with different ingredients in various cultures. Removing shoes when one steps into a home can be seen as a respectful gesture or for sanitary purposes. Many people; even if they think this custom is odd or they don’t know why others do it, will remove their shoes …show more content…

This idea explains the idiom “when in Rome do what the Romans do.” As for the preparation of food, many countries may have different names for similar dishes, this depends on history, language and sometimes ingredients. When cooking most people use what they have, so if one country for example, uses certain types of meat in their dish it can be because that is what is available to them. Students of sociology can travel and meet people from different backgrounds other than their own, possibly take cultural courses or do personal research on cultures in order to acquire the sociological imagination. In addition to learning about different cultures people are able to compare similarities and differences, this allows us to realize that although we all lead different lives much of our life experiences are similar. The idea is that social imagination can be applied in just about any aspect of life in a way to observe how interactions and actions are influential to other individuals and situations. For this reason acquiring a social imagination is based on keeping an open mind. Many things can be seen as ‘social imagination techniques such as exercising, drinking coffee, or watching TV. There are many ways to view a situation, you can assume that someone exercises to be

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