Sociological Imagination Essay

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In C. Wright Mills's view, one of the functions that the sociological imagination works is distinguishing 'the personal troubles of milieu' and 'the public issues of social structure'. Meanwhile, the sociological imagination allows us to see the important relationship between the two as well. In this essay, I would like to explain this distinction from my comprehension and provide a definition of sociological imagination first, and then analyses an aspect of my life which is prejudice against sissy boy using sociological imagination. In my understanding, the difference between Trouble and Issue in substance is that one is limited and one is broad. When trouble occurs, it related only to ourselves, the circle we are in touch with, and usually about the social life of our own; but when it comes to issue, it always related to the whole society, the whole city, country or even the whole world which is far beyond only a group of people. And it is about more than two milieus, organizations, systems and so on, overlap with each other affecting a large number of people. Besides, trouble could be solved by ourselves through things we know and within our narrow experience, considering only ourselves and maybe people around us; issue on the other hand, has to come up with a solution regarding different perspectives in the macro view and takes care of all the relevant people and department. 'Neither the life of an individual nor the history of the society can be understood without understanding both' noted by Mills, the sociological imagination is a quality of mind that facilitates people to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themse... ... middle of paper ... ... sissy boy. It is not my own trouble, but about the whole society. In the historical perspective, the concept of masculinity in 19th became a tradition and is inherited to the modern society constraining behaviors of "real man". Our family guide us toward what they think, or the society thinks is acceptable for each gender, keep us away from deviance. Media, at the same time, represents male with certain behaviors and characteristics, and reinforce our perception of gender role. All these gender stereotypes provide us a system for classifying people, influence our prospects for self and others, as well as the evaluation about others based on their gender-related characteristics and behaviors (Brannon, 2007). Therefore, when we see boys being effeminate, we would consider that as improper and they are deviant. Hence, we have bias or even prejudice against sissy boys.

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