SOC 201 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Social Forces
Document Summary
This is not to say that sociologists are uninterested in the behavior of individuals. The american sociologist c. wright mills sharpened the sociological perspective with his concept of the sociological imagination. Mills observed that people in our society often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles. In other words, people feel unable to alter their circumstances. And, mills suggested, in this feeling of being trapped and impotent, people are often quite correct. Mills suggests that people often misunderstand their own circumstances because they have an individualistic bias. The individualistic bias leads people to think that their own situations are wholly a result of their own behavior. They don"t notice that there are larger entities, forces outside of themselves, that shape their behaviors. Without guidance from the sociological imagination, our individualistic bias leads us to treat individuals as the source of problems.
