social imagination help?

[igorotak6]

I dont get what this essay prompt is asking for, can someone explain this to me with an example?

...In this paper, you will be evaluating your own sociological imagination and applying it to your social environment.

[Michael Ansusinha]

Well, after a quick google search, apparently sociological imagination is basically the means by which people step back and analyze the relationships between humans and societal events. For example, maybe I'll be walking down the street and see somebody get robbed. The victim becomes visibly angry or sad, an expression of negative emotions to a negative event, and I may wonder what would have happened if the victim had never been robbed.

That was a very simplistic example, and you probably shouldn't write about it, but that should give you a start on understanding what your essay is even looking for.

[Erin]

It means understanding how your life is shaped by society.

For example, you are in college because you are hardworking and ambitious...individual traits. But you are also in college because, in a thousand different ways, society put this expectation upon you as a middle-class white guy in this day and age. Understand how society impacts the individual, and yourself in particular.

Another way of looking at it is...in what ways are you a statistic. So, for example, if you got pregnant in high school.... presumably, you made choices about this behavior. But society also shaped your decisions about sexuality and about your body and about appropriate risks and about relationships. Would you have made those exact same decisions had you been born a hundred years ago... or in a different nation... or in a different social class?

Here's another example... perhaps you are an atheist/agnostic because you believe that this is the most enlightened position. But this position is very much shaped by history and society... from the protestant reformation when the church was first criticized, to the enlightenment where we learned to value all that science has to offer, to the Vietnam war when a whole generation of kids learned to challenge authority in powerful ways, to the rise of the Christian Right in politics in the early eighties that caused a back-lash against religion.... ALL of these things factored into your belief.... not just your own cleverness or whatever. At the same time, perhaps you are a Christian... this too is shaped very much by society... the fact that you were immersed in Judeo-Christian values and traditions, etc. If you were born in Nepal, it is unlikely that you would follow the same path. So while being a believer or not being a believer is obviously an individual decision in your own personal quest for truth, it is very much shaped by society.

We all like to imagine that we are totally in charge of our lives, our decisions, and certainly our beliefs. We like to imagine that we, as individuals and independent thinkers, are not swayed or manipulated by advertising campaigns... or pop culture.... or news media. But we are. Even non-conformists are.

The sociological imagination asks you to dig into this.

I hope this helps! And good luck with your essay!