Autobiography and your Sociological Imagination

Instructions:

Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.... No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their intersections within a society has completed its intellectual journey.... The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two in society.... For that imagination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another— from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessments of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self— and to see the relations between the two.” -- C. Wright Mills.



Write an autobiographical essay describing the intersection between your biography and history using your “sociological imagination” as discussed in C. Wright Mills’ essay “The Promise” (see ch.1 of the textbook for reference to Mills’ essay). What sociological factors have shaped your life so far? Your goal is to demonstrate your sociological understanding and learn more about course concepts, and about yourself, by thinking about how the two intertwine. The key to showing a sociological understanding is to connect your personal experiences, behaviors, and attitudes to the larger social structure. For example, think about your cultural background, socialization, race, ethnicity, class, gender or sexual orientation. How have any of these factors or the intersection of any of them given you advantages or disadvantages throughout life? What factors have shaped your parents’ lives, and how have those impacted your life? Make sure to use sociological concepts and theories throughout your paper, and underline or highlight them. The rubric for grading your paper is found below.

Content:

Autobiography Name: Institutional Affiliation: Date Introduction Social imagination as viewed by C. Mills describes the quality of mind that gives an individual the opportunity to relate history and biography and the interactions between these two factors with the society (Andreev, 2008). According to Mills, the variables between effective sociology and thought and the thought which fails is rested upon imagination. Sociological thought in this case is something that is limited to sociology and is an exercise that individuals attempt. Mills alleged that sociological research is guided more by a required administrative concern than intellectual views. This therefore means that this element it is guided by an accumulation of facts that purposefully facilitates administrative decisions. However, to fulfill the functions of sociological imagination there is a need of focusing on the substantive problem and to relate such problems to the historical and structural features of a social system (Andreev, 2008). These features are the makers of meaning for individuals since they affect their character, values, and their behaviors that make up a social system. This paper therefore aims at developing a Sociological Autobiography that describes the interaction between my biography and history und