Social theorists exist everywhere, including you and me. We just never realized that our way of viewing and analyzing the issues that surround us had a term for it. By reading the works of great sociologists like C. Wright Mills’ “The Promise of Sociology”, Allen’s “Social theory and Modernity”, and Lamart’s “Social Theory and its Uses”, we can take our observations and turn them into viable theories. After reading these three articles, I feel like I now understand more about how social theorists began and why it was needed. I even started to identify more as a social theorist as I realized that I had already been thinking like one ever since observing, analyzing, and creating my own explanation to any social happenings that I witnessed.
In Allen’s “Social theory and Modernity”, the piece explains how social theory got its start dating back to medieval times and how the idea itself got modernized to what it is today. Now, social theorists use concepts like capitalization, urbanization, science, and industrialization. When using the concept of science, an important model that social theorists use is the idea of positivism and empiricism. Allen says, “The basic tenant of positivism is that theology and metaphysics are imperfect ways of knowing and that positive knowledge is based upon facts and universal laws.” (5) Basically positivism are things that we can’t explain and understand; pretty much everything around us. Empiricism is a way for theorists to explain positivism, predict, and understand what we don’t know. (Allen) Lemart’s article “Social Theory and its Uses” deals more with the practical uses of social theory and how it applies to our everyday lives. Social theory is something that we as individuals in a bigger system because according to Lemart it “is a basic survival skill” (Lemart) It all goes back to us as individuals in a society to explain what we can’t understand.
In Mills’ “The Promise of Sociology”, "the sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.” (2) According to Mills, one important key point was how it introduces and breaks down the idea of having a “sociological imagination” through “the first fruit of...imagination”. He explains that once an individual realizes and understands his place in his time and location, that individual will start to see that they are one cog of a whole machine. The individual will start to see past their own problems and begin to correlate their problems to the happenings that surround them; an idea of private problems vs. public issues. (Mills) An example would be the divorce in a marriage (private problem) versus the dramatic divorce rate increase during the last 10 years (public issue). I believe that once we start realizing our own place in the machine called “life”, we can start seeing how our lives really does correlate and affect society as a whole. A lot of world issues that surround us now can be explained when we analyze how private problems snowball into becoming a public issue. Maybe when we start understanding more of how we as individuals impact each other as a society, we can prevent worse things from happening to our world.
The way Mills describes the idea of “sociological imagination” can be intimidating and confusing to understand. Really, it’s actually easier than we think and it’s a phenomenon that we’ve been doing in our everyday lives without our realization or understanding. All of us have, at least once every day, observed an issue going on around us and analyzed it; asking why and how did this happen. When we draw our own conclusions and theories, we have achieved the “sociological imagination”. I didn’t realize that I’ve possessed the sociological imagination my entire life. Even if it was something small or something life-changing, I’ve always been one to look at an issue and analyze it to the point where I come up with my own explanations; even when I do find out the truths that lead to the event, I would compare the facts to my findings and my own analyzing and theories. I know that I am not the only one and I think it is pretty neat that our whole world is filled with social theorists, yet we don’t even realize it. How are you one of many? Think about that the next time you watch the news or even go to the mall; see how far your sociological imagination will take you.
In Allen’s “Social theory and Modernity”, the piece explains how social theory got its start dating back to medieval times and how the idea itself got modernized to what it is today. Now, social theorists use concepts like capitalization, urbanization, science, and industrialization. When using the concept of science, an important model that social theorists use is the idea of positivism and empiricism. Allen says, “The basic tenant of positivism is that theology and metaphysics are imperfect ways of knowing and that positive knowledge is based upon facts and universal laws.” (5) Basically positivism are things that we can’t explain and understand; pretty much everything around us. Empiricism is a way for theorists to explain positivism, predict, and understand what we don’t know. (Allen) Lemart’s article “Social Theory and its Uses” deals more with the practical uses of social theory and how it applies to our everyday lives. Social theory is something that we as individuals in a bigger system because according to Lemart it “is a basic survival skill” (Lemart) It all goes back to us as individuals in a society to explain what we can’t understand.
In Mills’ “The Promise of Sociology”, "the sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.” (2) According to Mills, one important key point was how it introduces and breaks down the idea of having a “sociological imagination” through “the first fruit of...imagination”. He explains that once an individual realizes and understands his place in his time and location, that individual will start to see that they are one cog of a whole machine. The individual will start to see past their own problems and begin to correlate their problems to the happenings that surround them; an idea of private problems vs. public issues. (Mills) An example would be the divorce in a marriage (private problem) versus the dramatic divorce rate increase during the last 10 years (public issue). I believe that once we start realizing our own place in the machine called “life”, we can start seeing how our lives really does correlate and affect society as a whole. A lot of world issues that surround us now can be explained when we analyze how private problems snowball into becoming a public issue. Maybe when we start understanding more of how we as individuals impact each other as a society, we can prevent worse things from happening to our world.
The way Mills describes the idea of “sociological imagination” can be intimidating and confusing to understand. Really, it’s actually easier than we think and it’s a phenomenon that we’ve been doing in our everyday lives without our realization or understanding. All of us have, at least once every day, observed an issue going on around us and analyzed it; asking why and how did this happen. When we draw our own conclusions and theories, we have achieved the “sociological imagination”. I didn’t realize that I’ve possessed the sociological imagination my entire life. Even if it was something small or something life-changing, I’ve always been one to look at an issue and analyze it to the point where I come up with my own explanations; even when I do find out the truths that lead to the event, I would compare the facts to my findings and my own analyzing and theories. I know that I am not the only one and I think it is pretty neat that our whole world is filled with social theorists, yet we don’t even realize it. How are you one of many? Think about that the next time you watch the news or even go to the mall; see how far your sociological imagination will take you.