...Sociological Imagination Abstract In this paper I am going to describe an example from my life to utilize the sociological imagination, which depicts the linkage between personal troubles and public issues, how public issues caused my personal troubles. I will talk about pressure of the media and society, and how they influence many girls to go to the gym to get perfect body image. Mills believed that being able to see the relationship between the ordinary lives of people and the wider social forces was the key to the social imagination. The sociological imagination helps individuals understand the society by looking into a bigger picture of the position they are in, mostly in the environment they are living in. Going through this process helps individuals to see great link between personal troubles and public issues. In this paper I will describe an example from my life to utilize the sociological imagination, and how public issues affected my life. I will describe how public issues caused my personal trouble of conveying beauty and a good body image. As I was grew up I was a chubby kid, and although I didn’t have any major troubles I started growing an obsession of having and creating perfect body image. At that time both of my parents were not emotionally available and both of them struggled with alcohol addiction...
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...In 1959 American sociologist C. Wright Mills introduced the term social imagination to the English lexicon. Mills coined this term to describe a human ability to connect personal experiences with overall society. It is an outlook that is applied to disassociate us from ourselves so that we can begin to look at what and why we do things with a fresh perspective. This social imagination outlook will allow a person to connect their own personal struggles with the overall workings of society and to gain an understanding that their own personal strife may actually be caused by public issues. And with this knowledge gained, a person or society can begin to formulate a plan that can be used to progress or enact changes that will be beneficial to the overall public....
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...This essay will discuss the sociological imagination and social construction. It will offer insights of problem families and will look at it from a feminist theory and functionalism theory it will discus oppression and the impact on social institutions and underpin social work practise and the relevance. Charles Write Mills was an American Sociologist. His most famous was The Sociological Imagination, where mills states that personal troubles should become issues of the public. (mills books) By sharing these personal troubles with society will help a person realise they may not be alone and others maybe going through the same thing for example if a husband with his wife and children loses his job and is struggling to find another one. By...
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...Social Imagination and Same Sex marriage and society. To me social imagination is the ability to remove yourself from a given situation whether it affects your life or not personally and try to imagine the situation or conflict from a different perspective or more global view. It’s the personal aspect that affects our judgments, opinions and actions in a particular situation. Removal of the personal viewpoint gives us a much fairer and unbiased way to make a decision that is fair. Removing our past prejudices and mores we have grown up with can give us a total different way of looking at the world. One of the greatest issues today affecting many countries but seemingly most evident right now in the United States is same sex marriage. It has been in the forefront lately of every political race from small communities to the entire 50 states. I use as my article, the current issue of Time Magazine, July 8th, page 15, The Peoples Court On Race and Gay Marriage. There probably has not been an issue in history that has spurned such passionate arguments for and against same sex marriage since the race issues of the 50’s and 60’s. There are so many reasons people can use as for and against argument. It could be ones own person religious beliefs that hold us against this. Whether interpretation is correct, many Christians believe that homosexuality goes against the teachings of the bible. This is of course based on ones feeling of what the bible says as no where is it actually...
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...The Sociological Imagination according to C. Wright Mills is states that the sociological imagination is a quality of mind that allows us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two in society. (Mills, 1959, pg 6). He also explains the links between personal issues and public issues by helping to identify a personal issue and identifying it in the social structure. One tragic public issue that is very common in society today is ‘Domestic Violence’. For many years domestic violence in the family has been a private issue and was never spoken about in society. By using the three sensibilities that make up the sociological imagination which are the historical, cultural and critical sensibilities, society can begin to understand the radical changes in how society thinks we as individuals ‘should’ behave towards one another especially in the family unit according to societies expectations and social norms. The issue of domestic violence within families was evident in earlier societies. Using the historical sensibility we can see how society used to live and see how we have society has transformed our ideologies of this horrific public issue of domestic violence. From the earliest record, most societies gave the father or the patriarch of the family the right to use physical force against the women and children that he was in control of. This was evident in the reign of Romulus back in 753BC. Abbott (1852, p. 242) states that: The power of the father over his...
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...Social Media: A Future Beyond Imagination No small or big business can be wrong having a great presence on social media platforms as they provide the opportunity of reaching millions who are potential users of their products and services. The world continues to embrace social media, and the way that social networks are being used is becoming clearer. Companies are choosing to include social media in their marketing strategy, and the social network variety it offers in reaching the consumer is staggering. Social media is a one-way message; there is no dialogue, no feedback, no interaction, and its future goes beyond the imagination of its users. Google is catching up with Facebook; Google+ is breathing down its neck. As an embedded web asset, it provides data such as demographics, usage and content popularity. Twitter is many different things to many different people, and with its great tool to communicate short and snappy messages, has become a favorite target for social media marketing. LinkedIn is recognized as the most conservative of the social networks, because it is all about business and the network of choice for most professionals. The more social it becomes helps to enhance its user penetration and attractiveness. Pinterest and Tumblr are closing in as the fastest growing social networks on the planet (Bullas N. pg). The visual web is what drives this increase in the growth rate. Tim Mullaney, in his article, Social media is reinventing how business is done, reports...
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...Threshold experiences in the novels My Antonia and The Age of Innocence In any a piece of literature setting is an essential pillar of narrative construction: it not only includes some factual information about time and place or provides the background in which the events take place, but also has the power to shape the habits and attitudes of their users, or characters. Both Willa Cather in My Antonia and Edith Wharton in The Age of Innocence create the particular narrative texture that implicates some dynamics, i.e. some shifts and changes – on the one hand, the setting of the novels continually changes, and this invariably entails the changing of the characters. Since the setting doesn’t remain static, each time it changes there should be some “turning point”, from which moment on the further development of events becomes completely different. But what exactly this turning point is, what are those “triggers” that help to create this dynamic picture, how can we trace the changes and the molding and development of characters’ personalities, the changes of their identities? The thing is that the authors of both above-mentioned novels create series of “threshold experiences” taking place at the most significant, climatic points in the lives of the protagonists, acting like triggers, indicating some transformations in the outer world of the characters that entail the changes in their inner world as well. These thresholds operate on all levels: separating the interior...
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...IS IT A PROBLEM? It is quite common among children to have imaginary friends, with whom they talk, play, and even fight. It is also usual parental concerns regarding this issue, and the multiple visits to pediatricians, for fear that your child is suffering from some kind of disorder that could affect her future. Children at the age of 2 to 3 years old often begin to develop skills such as imagination, and it is at this stage when they begin to know their imaginary friends, almost establishing a parallel life to theirs. According to many experts, having unreal companions will not bring problems to our kids in their development. Actually, this fictitious world of fairies, princesses, and superheroes helps them grow and develop their emotions and creativity. Through these imaginary friends, children release positive and negative feelings, projecting. for instance, his conflicts with the diaper. The nonexistent relationships can strike up conversations and friendships that may help kids to understand better what´s right and wrong, and can even help them to broaden social skills. For example, children can start sharing their toys or clothes, blaming their fantastic friend for their mistakes ... etc. Parents should not participate in this world, but neither should repress nor reprimand the child for this game because it could create a conflict for the child and can make her to keep her imaginary friends from the parents. Hiding this parallel reality from parents can become...
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...object which evoke the emotions. Imagination enables the poet to look deep into the heart and soul of things. It is through the imaginative faculty that poet arrives at the general truths basic to human nature. Through the imaginative power, the poet is able to present emotions which he has not directly experienced. But he presents them in such a way that they seem personally experienced. Imagination is always associated with the created power and is a poetic principle. It is a transforming power as it has the ability to change the usual and ordinary in an unusual and uncommon way. Poetry is a modified "image of man and nature”. The poet is able to impart "the glory and freshness of a dream" to ordinary things of nature. He can present in his poetry the light that never was on land and sea. He is able to do so to the creative faculty of imagination. It is thus an active power. Poet is not a passive reflector of images formed from nature. He is a man who not only feels strongly but also thinks long and deeply. He is able to treat absent things as if they are present. Here Canterbury tales present an example of this imaginative power to visualize objects which are not present before poet’s eyes in their concrete forms but he presents them before us that they seem real. 29 pilgrims of Chaucer are his imaginative characters, all their qualities, merits and demerits are his own creations and here his creation is supported by his imagination. Imagination enables the poet to look deep into...
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...174, 194-95). Still concerned in 1815, he attached a note to the poem in his first Collected Works. "The subject of these stanzas," he asserted, "is rather an elementary feeling and simple impression [...] upon the imaginative faculty, than an exertion of it" (qtd. in Stillinger 539). Some critics have basically followed Wordsworth's lead: To Jack Stillinger the mental experience embodied by the poem is simple and ordinary (544), and to John Milstead the first three stanzas exemplify merely "a physical stimulus-and-response mechanism" through which the poet remains "passive" . Nevertheless, in the preface to the 1815 collection Wordsworth not only argues that the imagination is ruled by "sublime consciousness" (Stillinger 486), but he also places "I Wandered" among poems categorized by "Imagination." Indeed, many critics ignore Wordsworth's comments on the poem and instead read it as representing a moment in nature of spiritual insight that recurs during a later imaginative re-creation (Joplin 68-69, Stallknecht 81-82, Hartman 5). More precisely, though, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" dramatizes an experience of the sublime in its first three stanzas, which the poet recollects and re-experiences as a "spot of time" in the last stanza. Like other sublime passages in The Prelude and "Tintern Abbey," this one draws on Edmund Burke's as well as Wordsworth's ideas of the sublime. Burke's thoughts in his Philosophical Enquiry are especially recalled in the lines that...
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...All of us have some ambition or the other in life. Such a man has naturally a purpose in life and is always enthusiastic and makes sustained efforts to realise his ambition. He strives hard till he attains what he wishes. Nothing can deter him from the path he treads. But Ambition should be within one's reach. There is no fun for crying for the moon. My ambition is to be a great painter. My teachers have always appreciated my paintings and encouraged me to paint. I have painted various subjects varying from nature to portraits. My paintings have always found a place in our school exhibitions. My imagination is sharp and sense of colours good. This and my vivid imagination have made me a good painter. I have been practicing painting for a long time now and I realize that the more I paint, the better I get it. I know that I can bring a lot of joy to the people who view my paintings. I wish to have my paintings exhibited at various exhibitions and art galleries abroad. A painter creates an imaginary world for himself. I too can create such a world where I can feel comfortable and happy. It is my escape from the mundane reality that I face everyday. It will greatly satisfy my aesthetic sensibility to continue to paint. I hope to evolve my own style of paintings and set an example for the coming generations of painters. As a painter I can express my feelings on the canvas. I can project my sensibility about certain subjects I paint. I want to be a painter with a difference. My...
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...and figurative language to aid in showing how our mind becomes one with a scene upon seeing it. While Stevens’ poem is masterfully painted with imagery, it is ultimately the meaning of the poem that is so very rewarding and that makes it so great. The speaker describes snow covered trees as the sun glitters off of the top of the distant snow covered banks, while the wind blows and creates a sound that gives the reader a miserable feeling. The speaker talks about how winter is a cold and miserable time and it takes a special type of mind to see past that. The speaker has two realities in his hands- the cold and harsh reality of winter and what the speaker creates using his own perspective. What all of this really means is that using imagination, a whole new perspective can be created allowing the reader to hide the harsh, bare reality that the world really is. Stevens’ uses this to demonstrate that the central viewpoint of this poem lies in perspective. When reading the poem the reader comes to the realization that there is no snowman in the poem. Well, how could this be? That is because the title of “The Snow Man” is a metaphor. At the first glimpse of “The Snow Man”, it does not give much away. The only thing that can be deduced from the title is that it is going to be about the winter. But how might that come into play? It cannot be proven that the snow man in the title has a mind of winter, but of anyone who might, the snow man would be a likely candidate. If the snow man does have...
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...Literature can be shared written works and stories created by different authors from different time periods. There are many different styles of literature and many different authors who write literature. Literature can be stories, poems, or many other things. The imagination in literature is the human power that shapes artistic expression; it enables a writer’s work to become an expression of meaning in our world, and allows readers to engage in identifying with what the writer’s work has to say about things that matter. (Clugston 2010). Literature helps the reader escape into a world where their imaginations are able to run wild; you can be who you want to be, because literature becomes your secret world of reality. Day Dreaming allows us to follow all sorts of paths and free to generate all sorts of images, feelings, and thoughts. Our daily way of being typically requires us to be quite focused, and goal oriented. Using a reader-response approach, in this paper you will connect with literature, you will find a personal link or imaginative entry in this story. The literary work of James Thurber: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty will show you how an ordinary man escapes his anonymous life by disappearing into a world of imagination filled with heroism, romance and action. Walter Mitty will embark on a global journey that turns into an adventure more extraordinary than anything he could have ever imagined. . James Thurber wrote a short story about an imaginary character who is caught up...
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...use to help you understand literature. The reader’s response is one of the best ways to help you understand literature because it forms question based around your interest in the story. Based on author (Shapiro, 2010), his comment on literature was “just as people generate causal explanations for social events around them, story readers usually generate inferences about causality of events when reading a story.” I always try to create my own imaginary world to help me lose myself inside the story. “When you allow reading to unlock your imagination, your connection sets the stage for intellectual engagement.” (Clugston, 2012). I have read several forms of literature during a homework reading assignment and there was one story that stood out in my opinion. The story called “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” written by James Thurber. This story was great because it made me create images in my mind as I was reading the story. This story contained two key ingredients that I love to relate to when I am reading. A character with a imagination and can find humor in their daily activities with the real world. I was able to lose myself in his thoughts as his imagination ran wild throughout his adventure to accomplish missions for his wife. I was also able to relate to his sarcastic answers he gave his wife when she asked many questions. I like to use a process when reading to help me understand the story and what connections I have to the story. The type of analytical...
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...Literature can be shared written works and stories created by different authors from different time periods. There are many different styles of literature and many different authors who write literature. Literature can be stories, poems, or many other things. The imagination in literature is the human power that shapes artistic expression; it enables a writer’s work to become an expression of meaning in our world, and allows readers to engage in identifying with what the writer’s work has to say about things that matter. (Clugston 2010). Literature helps the reader escape into a world where their imaginations are able to run wild; you can be who you want to be, because literature becomes your secret world of reality. Day Dreaming allows us to follow all sorts of paths and free to generate all sorts of images, feelings, and thoughts. Our daily way of being typically requires us to be quite focused, and goal oriented. Using a reader-response approach, in this paper you will connect with literature, you will find a personal link or imaginative entry in this story. The literary work of James Thurber: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty will show you how an ordinary man escapes his anonymous life by disappearing into a world of imagination filled with heroism, romance and action. Walter Mitty will embark on a global journey that turns into an adventure more extraordinary than anything he could have ever imagined. . James Thurber wrote a short story about an imaginary character who is caught up...
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