SOCIETY AND CULTURE CIA 1 SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION SUPRABH THAKUR 1523413 2BBAH-B WHAT IS SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION? C. Wright Mills defined sociological imagination as "the vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society."Another way of describing sociological imagination is the understanding that social outcomes are based on what we do. To expand on that definition, it is understanding that some things in society may lead to a certain outcome. The factors mentioned in the definition are things like norms and motives, the social context are like country and time period and the social action is the stuff we do that affects other people. The things we do are shaped by: the situation …show more content…
It is a thriving industry that continues to grow every year. It is feared, that illegal trafficking of humans may soon outdo the illegal drug trade. Every day there are thousands of people falling victims to advertisements coaxing them with the promise of a better future. In countries like India, the victims may have been abducted, deceived or even bought from their family members. They are vulnerable due to the lack of education, poor financial standing and absolute immaturity. Human Trafficking and Sociological Imagination In relation to sociological imagination we see how human trafficking impacts the various factors of a society such as the individual, economy and the society on the whole itself. Psychological Effects The victims suffer from lack of self-esteem, emotional disturbance, disorientation, and depression and are scarred for life. They develop deep psychological disorders that they struggle with for the rest of their lives even if they have been rescued. Psychological vulnerability hinders them from having a healthy state of mind in the future. The victims are likely to become withdrawn and tend to be suicidal. Any children born to the victims of prostitution are taken away at the time of birth causing further mental agony to the mothers. In fact, the longer the victims have been enslaved, greater will …show more content…
The financial repercussions cannot be overlooked. In fact, the network of traffickers has gained immense financial strength which allows such illegal activities to thrive without the fear of law. Illegal immigration is also a threat to national security and a cause of concern for governments worldwide. It gives rise to other ills such as terrorism, poverty, poor standard of living, unemployment, expanding population, wastage of resources, high crime rates, and lack of enforcement of law and order in the country. These factors slow down the economic growth of the
Sociology is and what do sociologists study. It is also vital to look at the three basic
The Social Imagination is a tool that was created by C. Wright Mills in order for people to pull away from a familiar situation or routine and look at it differently in order to see how the situation influences our everyday decisions. The Social Imagination can be used for something as simple as questioning why do we drive a car? Driving a car is a part of many people’s everyday lives, when people want to go somewhere, whether it be to work, school, or the mall, all a person has to do is get into the car, and drive to their destination. Driving a car has become normalized, that sometimes many people don’t think why they drive a car instead of using other forms of transportation, such as walking, or bicycling. Before automobiles were invented, and widely used, the only forms of
Innumerable victims of human trafficking are faced with identical social issues to those of slavery, struggling with demoralization and violence. An article published by CNN tells the story of Sacharay, a victim of human trafficking that was thrown into the system as a pubescent 14-year old girl, ostracized from her peers. After building a friendship with a man in his 30s' he soon began asking her for "favors", pleading her to have intercourse with other men for his profit. While controlling this girl well through her teenage years her trafficker was able to continue with his power, recruiting more individuals to his service (Sex trafficking: The new American slavery). As his dominance was left unchecked, he was likely to abuse this power over more populations, continuing to build this illegal network of trafficked slaves. Just as the slaves in The Underground Railroad, as soon as these girls didn't want to answer to him anymore he would punish them, putting a gun to their head or forcing them to do some other cruel punishment. Violence and dehumanization are two common methods of exerting power on an individual that were unchecked and abused in many cases of human trafficking. The sufferers of human trafficking were treated like objects that one would lend out for certain amounts of time, even marked for ownership by tattoos that the pimp would force them to get. Sacharay stated that at the peak of her time under her pimp she had sexual relations with over forty men in one day-in which she was treated as an toy for other people's enjoyment rather than a human. To this day she still has tattoos from her years under the control of another person, reminding her of this trauma every day. Pimps like Sacharay's have a deep-seated desire for power, and since many victims of sex trafficking were vulnerable they became easy pickings for traffickers.
Summary: We see that there are many different aspects and types of human trafficking that everyone should be made aware of. As a whole human trafficking is a lucrative industry raking in $150 BILLION globally. The impact that this industry has on its victims is
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
The term Sociological Imagination was coined by C. Wright Mills and refers to seeing sociological situations from a broad point of view, going beyond one’s thoughts and feelings, and by seeing it how others would see it. In the textbook Introduction to Sociology by Giddens, et. al Mills argued that we needed to “overcome our limited perspective…[and have] a certain quality of mind that makes it possible to understand the larger meaning of our experiences” (4). Therefore one should look at the overall social problems and not at a specific individual’s situation. With this concept in mind I am going to analyze the Guardian online 2012 article “Why our food is making us fat,” by Jacques Peretti. The article mainly speaks about the rapid rise in obesity and the main contributor to it, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). The article also points out some of the economic and political influences behind HFCS.
Wright Mills, an American sociologist coins the term sociological imagination as “the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society (Mills, 1959). This term is not necessarily a theory, rather an outlook of society and the ability to consider life beyond the typical day-to-day attributes. This results in a greater understanding of individual development in a larger social context contributing to a greater quality of mind distinguishing individuality and the correlation between societies at large (Sociological Imagination, Video file). Sociological imagination to me personally means the ability for one to imagine oneself on a bigger
Today in society, people follow these “cultural myths”, which tells us what is and what is not acceptable in life because these morals have been instilled in us since childhood. People created cultural myths as a set of social norms they expected people to follow. In Kenneth A. Gould’s and Tammy L. Lewis’s article, The Sociological Imagination, they talk about society and the way or how it affects us. It examines the relationship between an individual and society. Everything we do and how we do it is affected by society and others around us. Everything that happens with society in turn affects us and those around us. The way we live and we respond to society can have a major impact on the rest of the world.
...ession and anxiety is correlated with the experience the victim had in trafficking as well as their personal experience entering back into society after trafficking. Stressors play a large role in this such as, entering back into employment, the type of support they have, how they are dealing with their emotions from trafficking, and whether or not their families accept them back. The studies also looked at whether or not the participants of their studies had experienced violence before trafficking. The results showed that those who did experience violence had a higher chance of developing mental disorders after trafficking. This goes back to the discovery that the more violence the victims are subjected to, the more likelihood they will have PTSD as a result. Overall, the entire aspect of sex trafficking is degrading to its victims and causes them much pain.
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
Social science is the scientific study of human society and social relationships. Social science definitely helps us make the connection with our personal situations in everyday life. The two topics that interested me were sociological Imagination and politics. In this essay I will explain what I have learnt from these two topics and how they apply to my personal life as a member of society.
The effect that trafficking has on their victims is the same effect that people have when they were raped, sexually harassed, etc. People who were trafficked tend to suffer from serious health problems including physical health, reproductive health and mental health problems. Mostly women but men too tend to go into physical exhaustion and become victims of unwanted touching, grabbing, oral sex, anal sex, etc. Mental wise the victim might have many emotional effects, severe stress and depression.
Human trafficking is a form of slavery, forcing victims to engage in sexual activities and labors against their will. These activities can be taken place through force, fraud, or constraint. Human trafficking is not just affecting one group of people, it is a worldwide issue, affecting all different ages, genders, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds. Human trafficking is such an immense problem, apprehending the true size, knowing how to help, and how to keep the issue from reoccurring. Human trafficking is and is still becoming such a serious issue that something needs to be done about.
The Sociological Imagination The human attitudes have always been a curiosity that captivated most of the great social theorists like Karl Marx, Engels and Durkheim. One of the most unhumble attitude of the humanity was Racism and stereotyping. The racial issue even in the 21st century continue to be a subject that still is present and significant even though we tend to say that racism and other forms of discrimination are prohibited by law and illegal still even in the US the country of all freedoms people face everyday racism, discrimination and humiliation The Sociological imagination, a concept brought by C. Wright Mills basically states that a person lives out a biography and lives it out with some historical sequence. That means that everyone lives his personal life and personal experience but at the same time he contributes to change the history or to affect the society and that creates the historical sequence.
C. Wright Mills describes the sociological imagination as a way of recognizing the pervasiveness of social influences when understanding human behaviours and social patterns. It helps people understand personal problems by understanding them in a broader context (class lecture, September 22, 2015). The sociological imagination is the key to understanding how societies control and change their members, and how societies are changed by the actions of their members (Curtis & Tepperman, 2006). Some of these sociological concepts that have influence on a person’s life include: gender, class, race/ethnicity, education, inequality, technology, and many more. In this essay I am going to use the sociological imagination to analyze how my personal life has been influenced by these larger social forces particular to the time and place in which I have grown up. More specifically, I am going to look at social forces such as class, gender,