The Concept of Sociological Imagination in The Real World, Sixth Edition

In the first chapter of ‘The Real World, Sixth Edition’ it is about different sociologist’s views on sociology. There have been many different perspectives on the term sociology since the 1980s. Howard Becker is one of the lexicographers, and he believes that sociology is the analysis of individuals partaking in things with other individuals. In order for us to gain the knowledge of different sociology viewpoints, we have to understand the meaning of sociology in order to form our perspectives on sociology and other things related to sociology such as sociological imagination. This term came to light in 1959 by C. Wright Mills which can help us comprehend the association between individual difficulties and collective problems.

Sociological Imagination tries to connect micro-sociology and macro-sociology it is known that the prominent social power influences how someone lives their life, as well as themselves, shape other people’s lives. C. Wright mills trust that sociological imagination is beneficial because we all have experienced different experiences throughout our lives that shape our identity and what we do with that experience may or may not influence someone else’s life, which is true because what we experience shapes our perspectives on many different things so just imagining how something we do or experience impacts someone else’s entire life blows my mind. With us reading about sociological imagination we are gaining the knowledge to form our perspectives on the relationship between ourselves and society which will make us have a greater understanding of why we do what we do and how that can affect someone else.

In the book “Destined for Greatness, Introductions to and Interest in Music” I connected this with the book “Real World, Sixth Edition” concept of sociological imagination, that people influence our life’s as well as we influence theirs. In the book he is interviewing musicians and what lead them to becoming musicians. The first person he examines is Dean, the experiences that dean had where vivid moments of car trips with his dad and how the music would put him to sleep, the music to him was memorizing. He had a good experience with certain songs and those artists he was listening to helped shape him into the musician he is today. A few artists had such an impact on him someday he will have an impact on someone else just by playing music. But connecting it to a wider society people connect to things that they can relate to such as lyrics, and in return that also influences people’s lives.

The second person was Andrew. It states that “musicians cited their musical memories in early childhood as clean and the definitive start of their moving toward musical life course trajectories” these memories had a huge impact on who they wanted to be, and it influenced them to move forward in that career. You can connect this to the term sociology because it shows the interaction between the music, artist and the person effected by the music. Music is usually based off of experiences such as beliefs, pain, happiness etc. These things can help shape other people’s prospective of relationships, society and beliefs, because a lot of people tend to make music that people can relate to and if they don’t relate to it, they are learning from someone else’s prospective and then they might take on the same view as that person.