Sociological Imagination vs. Common Sense

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Sociological Imagination vs. Common Sense

This essay will aim to explain differences between the sociological imagination and common sense. What the sociological imagination and common sense are and how they are at work in our society today. Using the area of educational achievement I will bring into this essay examples through research and findings from sociologists such as; Pierre Bourdieu, Culture Capital (1977), Bernstein-(1961)speech patterns’ and Paul Willis (1977)learning to labour, and use these examples as evidence to show how these would explain educational achievement in relation to the sociological imagination and common sense assumptions. I shall begin this essay by discussing where the sociological imagination arose from and what this is in comparison to common sense.

American sociologist C.Wright Mills (1959) published a sociological text called ‘The sociological Imagination (1959), C.Wright Mills wrote in his book about ‘the troubles of milieu’ the word milieu means (environment) this was looked at as being where an individual will find themselves in a situation that is of a personal social setting to them and therefore could indeed affect them personally and in some extent the situation be this persons making.

Mills(1959), also wrote about public issues of social structure, referring to matters that go beyond the individual and look at society as a whole. How society is organised and how society works. This goes far beyond ‘the troubles of milieu, as it doesn’t look at the person and there individual experiences in society but looks at the wider social structure e.g social institutions… education, religion, family, law and how they have developed and interact with each other examples of the differenc...

... middle of paper ...

...ion, Sociology making sense of society, 4th ed, Harlow, Pearson Longman, pp. 604-605.

Mills C.Wright (1959) The Sociological imagination , Harmondsworth, England, Oxford University Press.

Office of National Statistics (2004), Education, Ethnicity and Identity, Available from: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=461 [accessed 28 September 2010], Cite as (office of National Statistics 28 September 2010)

Pierre B (1961) Culture Capital Cited, Taylor P ; Richardson Jr John; Yeo, A, (1995), The class structure and educational attainment, Sociology in Focus, pp.297, Ormskirk, Causeway Press.

Scanlan J Stephen; Guest-editor; Grauerjolz Liz (2009) 50 Years of C.Wright Mills and the Sociological Imagination, Teaching Sociology 37, (1), pp1-7

Willis Paul (1977) Learning to labour, Westmead, hants, England, Saxon House, Teakfield Limited.

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