SOC 22000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Liberal Democracy, The Sociological Imagination

• School: Purdue University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 22000
• Professor: Hillis, Rolden

Document Summary

Sociology offers a unique- perhaps even peculiar way of thinking about the world- a different way of explaining what happens in human life and a distinctive approach to solving human dilemmas. We call this unique approach the sociological imagination, a term coined by c. wright in 1959. Sociological imagination- the ability of individuals to see the relationship between events in their personal lives and events in their society. Sociology is the study of society, whose goals are to establish, explain and predict patterned regularities of human behavior. The sociological imagination is stimulated by willingness to view the social circumstances that produce social problems. The sociological imagination requires that we search for the link between the micro and macro levels of analysis. There is strong tendency in liberal democracies towards seeing human behavior in terms of individual characteristics, abilities, choices and preferences. We tend to experience whatever happens in our own lives is unique and private to them.