2. Sociological imagination

Formal theorizing & rigorous social inquiry

Social order model

Focuses on how social forces affect harmony, cohesion, solidarity

• Social bonds and moral regulation ensure that people feel their lives worth living

• Society is like a system- the success or failure of a society rests in how well its subsystems “function” in maintaining it

Conflict model

Focuses on how social forces maintain hierarchy, domination, oppression- inequality

• Social inequalities that reflect deeper systems within society

  • One group over another group - lesser than or not part of

• e.g.

  • Settler colonialism and indigenous cultures and lands to expand their territory

  • Capitalism exploiting the working class to generate more money

• Focus on power relations on a structural level

• Macro lenses

→ Alan sears suggests how we can reframe our understanding of reality

He outlines 5 characteristics of Formal thinking

1. Conceptual rigour

   • Concepts are theoretical tools, but we need to use these to apply them

2. Logical rigour

   • Do the premesis all work together

   • The elements of an analysis fit together or do they contradict?

     • Covid example with “covid was a bioweapon” and “the pandemic was a hoax”

3. Empirical rigour

   Empirical

   • Belief that knowledge of the world is obtained from experiences such as observation and perception.

4. Relates to existing bodies of knowledge

   • Building on the foundations of theories and critique them to improve them

5. Asks second-order questions

   • thinking beyond the norms, and asking broader questions

     • e.g. giving food to the poor - why is their so much poverty?

Sounds sociological analysis and awareness, calls us to use information to develop reason

Sears and the question of neutrality

→ Is sociology a “value-neutral” science?

Views sociology as an objective, unbiased social science

• We have a responsibility to seek unbiased facts and state them “as they are”

• Value judgments about the facts should be left to politicians & public

Or..

→ a potential force for change?

• Inequalities in society skew what we accept as normal

• We have a public duty to challenge injustice and pursue research that makes the world better

• “Neutrality” is an illusion that tends to reinforce the status quo

Epistemology

concerned with knowledge and knowing

• The philosophical study of knowledge, its limits and validity

We can compare sociological inquiry to:

• Religious thought

• Common sense, conspiracies

• History → concerned with the specific, understanding detail of the time or event under investigation

• etc

• What about Indigenous epistemologies?

Colonial research

• Views indigenous peoples and “objects”

• illusion of value-neutrality

• view from “nowhere”

  vs

Indigenous research

• Indigenous peoples as authorities

• unavoidably political and practical

• View from somewhere

Hence: indigenous research is rendered “unspeakable” from a colonial standpoint

Key Points from Coburn et al.

• Social sciences have been use as a form of violence against Indigenous Peoples

• Colonial sciences are unjustly taken as the default standard for what is “true”

• Often, Indigenous “beliefs” are only validated as knowledge once confirmed by colonial institutions

• Ethical duties must extend beyond just the participants

Sociological imagination

Key elements

1. Biography, history, social milieu

'“ Where does this society stand in human history?”

• Mills observes that people feel trapped in their circumstances amidst a large scale, impersonal social changes

• Describes 1950s as a “uneasiness and indifference

  • we lack to identify the actual problem

  ---

  • example

on the “discovery” of sexual harassment - 70s

Connection to sociological imagination

• Sense of “traps,”“uneasiness,” “indifference”—we need an epistemology to formulate what our problems or troubles even are!

2. Personal troubles and public issues

• Our own personal issues

• Social problems that arise in society

  • Unemployment example

    - 100,000 v 1

    • One person unemployed → their own personal trouble and we look directly to their character

    - 50 million

    • But when there is mass unemployment, it is an issue

• Allows us to see both at a micro and macro level

  • Individual, history, and society all tied together

3. What is the meaning of this?

consider what the past can tell us about the future

for the types of men and women that prevail in this society