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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.
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
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...
The Sociological Imagination speaks to the understanding of our own actions being a part of a larger historical and social picture. It encourages us to see what influences we have and what influences society has over our own individual lives, whether our decisions are determined by sociological factors and forces or are entirely in our own control. The sociological imagination enables us to see the relationship between history and biography. It helps us to understand the relationship between personal troubles and public issues, and as well as this, it addresses the three profound questions that C. Wright Mills asked. The three videos given, offer a range of successful and unsuccessful insight and explanations about the sociological
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
Throughout SOCIO 211, Professor Sanderson has repeatedly stated that the things we do every day are not natural. Instead these things are constructed by society. He has repeatedly reminded us that we don’t “see” sociology or culture and that we need to “teach ourselves how to see again.” This has been the main take home point of this class for me. I’ve never realized how much I am shaped by my friends, family, teachers, and others around me. That being said, three sociological concepts have improved my understanding of my relationship with society: socialization, gender, and family. These three concepts have been the most important to me because they all are concepts I’ve related to my everyday life, that I am influenced by, and have been molded into. These concepts have made me realize that I cannot necessarily be whoever I want to be or do whatever I want to do. Because of these three main points, I understand my roles and expectations better in life. I have noticed that I act the way I do because I have been socially constructed to do so through socialization, expectations of gender and gender roles, and by how my family has influenced my view of society.
The Charles Wright Mills’ concept of the Sociological Imagination was a sizeable step forward in the sociological discipline. In this paper, I intend to demonstrate what exactly Mills means of the Sociological Imagination, and how he is able to connect the concept of private troubles and public issues. Additionally, I plan to prove how he is able to link an individual’s private troubles to largely be a product of historical and social forces. To do this, an example will be taken from my own life and then applied to show how something that has seemingly only impacted a single individual to create a private trouble, is actually a result of a larger pushing force in the sociological world. In doing this, I hope to show how a private trouble can exist as a consequence of a larger institutional issue. To round out my
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.
In our current culture, there is a huge difference between what is considered to be for girls or boys. From birth, children are told what colors and styles of clothing they wear, what toys they should play with, and how they should act. Often, girls are told they cannot play with toys considered to be for boys and boys are told they are not allowed to play with toys considered to be for girls. Children who do decide they want to play with the toys not traditionally for their gender are often scolded by family members, pushing the children back to their gender-specific toys. Gender socialization starts at birth and continues from adolescence, to adulthood, causing specific and detrimental differences
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
All around the world society has created an ideological perspective for the basis of gender roles. Gender and sex are often times misused and believed to be interchangeable. This is not the case. There are two broad generalization of sexes; female and male, yet there is a vast number of gender roles that each sex should more or less abide by. The routinely cycle of socially acceptable behaviors and practices is what forms the framework of femininity and masculinity. The assigned sex categories given at birth have little to do with the roles that a person takes on. Biological differences within females and males should not be used to construe stereotypes or discriminate within different groups. Social variables such as playing with dolls or
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
Over the years, humans have come up with a tradition that each sex has a certain role to follow. Centuries later gender roles still seem to exist, even though this century is supposed to be known as accepting new ideas and people’s beliefs. In Katha Pollitt’s article “HERS; Why Boys Don 't Play With Dolls”, she argues that the reason gender roles still exist is because parents are afraid to raise a homophobic child. As well as, Noel Perrin agrees that gender roles have nothing to do with your sexual orientation. Therefore, if one was to look at a certain gender role, they will understand that this do not define a person. In addition to Pollitt’s article, the existence of gender roles in today’s society is
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...
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...
One doctor of sociological sciences defines masculinity and femininity as a “set of attitudes, roles, norms of behavior, [and] hierarchy of values typical of the male and female sex in each specific society.”(Il’inykh,S.A.(2012)) This suggests that “masculinity” and “femininity” are equivalent to gender identities but are influenced by each individual society. From a young age, even before being born, individuals are already upheld to expectations by society based on what their biological sex is. For example, when parents are informed that they are having a male, they usually decorate everything in blue with a theme of cars, dinosaurs, superheroes, or anything that is considered to be tough, and are gifted with toys that include trucks, dinosaurs, action figures, video games etc.(Brewer) Conversely, when parents find out they are having a female, they go for a more girly theme when decorating which includes the color pink, soft decor, flowers, butterflies or ballerinas, and most toys girls receive are tea sets, dolls, items to play house with, etc.(Brewer). With these early exposures, boys and girls are already presented with their masculine or feminine expectations formed by society which convey the idea that men must be strong and dominant while the