Academic english

What is the sociological imagination?

The sociological imagination first coined by Wright mills in 1959. The vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society. Seeing "strange in the familiar" is detaching yourself from individualistic interpretations of human behavior and accepting the initially "strange" notion that human behaviors are a product of social forces. The ability to see things socially and how things interact and influence each other that is the sociological imagination.

How can we differentiate between personal troubles and social issues?

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Example: unemployment/ if your unemployed, that's a trouble in your life (personal). But, if it was during the great recession, you were in the same boat as everybody else in society. Therefore your personal trouble is connected to a broader public issue.

What is the problem with the common sense explanations of ills?

They fail to consider the wider picture of the issue yet they Just focus on pre-conceived Judgments for example in relation to aboriginal people a common sense explanation would be that they are all petrol sniffing no hoppers though this is not the case what has been failed to be realized here is that due to colonization indigenous people lost a lot of there rights and are still trying to recover from all they have lost in life. Examples of social issues that might be better explained through investigating social forces and influences rather than individual failings Unemployed- its not necessarily that you're lazy or don't want to work.

There are social forces at play that make it more likely some groups over others will be unemployed. Seeing the general in the particular show that age, gender, class, race, sexuality they all impact behaviors and life chances. Although we are individuals, social forces touch our lives in significant ways, even if we don't see those forces. Sociology: is the study of society, whose goals are to establish, explain and predict patterned regularities of human behavior. The sociological imagination asks us to see the strange in the familiar and general in particular, linking our behaviors to broader social forces.

Personal trouble re-linked to broader public issues, and our goal in sociology is to uncover those links using the sociological data and not rely on common sense explanations

Social class and stratification

What is social stratification?

Social stratification refers to a system of social inequality

Which societies experience social stratification?

All societies have social stratification to some degree -Some societies have simpler stratification where they stratify along one dimension (such as age) while others are more complex and consist of many different factors reading stratification (such as age, race, gender, etc.)

3 types of stratification systems

• Estate systems
• Caste systems
• Class systems

Definition of class in sociology the term class does not refer to one's style or sophistication, rather social class is the social structural position groups hold relative to the economic, social, political and cultural resources of society. Class can not be directly observed but can be "seen" by observing the various displays others project such as brand of clothing, type of car, the places one shops. These objects become symbols of an individuals lass status.

Types of class systems:

• Upper class: owns major share of corporate and personal wealth
• Upper middle class: those with high incomes and high social prestige
• Middle class
• Lower class: workers in skilled trades and low-income bureaucratic workers
• Lower class: the displaced and poor.

The social class that you are in gives you different access to Jobs, income, education, power, and social status. Age, race, gender as well as class shape people's experiences within society. These differences allow different opportunities for success.

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