Sociological Imagination

The “Sociological Imagination” term was coined by an American sociologist named C. Wright Mills in 1959. Mills described the “sociological imagination” as “the vivid awareness of the relationships between personal experience and the wider society.” The goal of using sociological imagination is to obtain the ability to analyze different things in society and becoming capable of discerning different or similar patterns between society and one’s self. With sociological imagination, you are able to see create a broader perspective to see factors on how different changes or norms in a society affects the average person, allowing you to see the whole picture rather than a single point of view. One example to better understand this concept is a company firing its employees. From an individual perspective of the worker, they would question how much effort they did to keep their job, or wonder what they could’ve done to keep their job.

However, if the worker were to look through a lense with sociological imagination, the worker would be able to see that them losing their job was not a result of weak character, but a result of their jobs being given to cheap labour in another country, a massive outsourcing of jobs.(Example is taken from Macionis 9.) Using the power of sociological imagination, people are able to better discern the similarities and differences in social trends and personal experience. On Friday, July 13th of 2018, my family and I went on a camping trip with a group of family friends in Livermore, California. I had little to no knowledge of any of the people we were going with; everyone was a complete stranger to me. When we arrived and finished setting up the tents, my parents introduced me to one of their good close friends, Chi Nguyen. Chi Nguyen is a 63 years old Vietnamese woman who loved to get a good laughs out of people and was surrounded by a friendly, welcoming aura. She was a short, pale skinned, and energetic woman that definitely acted a lot younger than she really was. Chi grew up in a poor, Catholic area in California.. Her mother worked at a newspaper printing factory and her father a field worker. They often struggled with getting food on their plates some nights, and didn’t have technology so prevalent in their life. Education was weak and good education was for the privileged growing up. Despite it, she worked tremendously hard in schools. She was one of four children, and received plenty of love from her parents and neighbors, despite the love being divided upon four offspring. Chi remembers how little her community was on her street and how she treated everyone there as family of sorts, and how they would have some houses with open doors and many conversations. They would often trade goods, wash each others clothes, and have potlucks or religious gatherings. Her life as she described it was hard, but peaceful and beautiful nevertheless. Chi met her future husband Khan in community college. They stayed in a single house with her relatives. At that time, for her, she only saw Asian Americans and African Americans reside in her area. Chi married Khan at the age of 24, and they had their first of three children when Chi was 25. This decision to have this many children was never something she had to think about, she wanted a large family because of how much family meant to her. Chi never divorced anybody, as she never believed in the concept and loved her husband dearly, possible because of her religious affiliation and.

Finding a stable job with her husband was difficult, and her family was poor. They had very little, and Chi worked part time a job as a cashier in grocery, but she spent most of her time at home raising her children. At the same time, she was going to Community College to earn her bachelor degree. Chi’s time in finding jobs and housing was difficult. They were constantly on the move from house to house because of rising. Despite the obstacles, she slowly rose up in job careers, starting as a cashier, to a dressmaker, and finally as a registered public nurse after years of hard work. She is a very religious woman, and she says that Catholicism helped her stay on track to create a better future for her family. She attends Mass and Confession every week, and she enrolled her children to a Catholic school. Apparently, her parents were also heavily influenced by Catholicism, and she was somewhat forced to conform to their Catholicism because of strict parenting. It was clear that religion was a large driving force for Chi, and apparently still is today. Chi is a very positive, and hard working woman that had to overcome many obstacles to get where she is today. It is easy to see that my life is much different than that of Chi Nguyen. Hearing Chi tell me about all these things like the struggles of finding a job and growing up in a poor environment really did make me feel grateful for what I have and acknowledge my privilege to live a much easier life. I grew my life as one of two children up in lower, middle class in Berkeley, and I never had to worry about being able to get sufficient food every night or finding a stable place to live. Good education was a privilege for me, and the rise of media and tech became one of my main ways of socializing. My life was peaceful and free of struggles. To start, we have only one thing that is similar. The only similarity we share is that we are both Catholic Vietnamese people. I did not have to conform to Catholicism as much as Chi had to, however. Chi and I are completely different in almost all aspects.

One of these differences that differentiates us is technology. Growing up for me, technology was becoming one of the prime ways to communicate with others. Emails, phone calls, texting, etc, pretty much obliterated the concept of face to face discussion that Chi had so often. As a result, many face to face connections and bonds were uncommon for me, as I had the ability to speak with my friends or make new ones at the tip of my fingertips . I grew up not knowing any of my neighbors, as so did many other millennials because we no longer have the need to knock on someone's door. Not needing to socialize with your neighbors because of messaging and media became the catalyst to the fading of face-to-face, and the things Chi did to socialize like potlucks and gatherings disappeared for me. Another difference is social environment. Chi grew up in a poor area in California, at a time where minorities and whites lived in separate sections. Because of this she mostly saw Asian and African Americans and Christians, unaware of the wide diversity of cultures and religions. Because of this she grew up ignorant to other norms and cultures. She told me how she was forced to conform to Catholicism and its culture, and she obliged because it was simply the only religion she saw around her. This is very different to me. I grew up surrounded by diversity.

I would look around and always see an entirely different person than myself, be it via religion, skin color, size, etc. Because of my open awareness to all these cultures, I became much more accepting of different norms and cultures, and allowed me to identify or relate to others outside of my own culture. Unlike Chi, I was not obliged to conform to Catholicism, I instead had much more freedom because of the large variety of religions and cultures out there, In conclusion, it is easy to see the two different paths Chi and I lived and how our many differences were catalyzed by a large variety of components in our two societies through changes in attitudes, norms, environment, and culture. Allowing myself to hear Chi Nguyen’s own perspective and life through sociological imagination I am able to see societies’ factors that create change in our lives, making me not limited to personal experience and views.