Principles of Sociology Discussion 1

The authoritative sociologist C. Wright Milles first introduced one of the most essential framework/mindset in sociology, the Sociological Imagination in The Sociological Imagination originally published in 1959. It delineates several fundamental models of thinking in order to explain social situations.

Firstly, Milles emphasized that in order to find the answer to why we are here and why we are where we are, one must put external forces such as race, gender, history, and social classes, etc. into consideration as they are all shaping ones behavior besides individual factors. It is therefore at the intersection of biography and history could we find the answer to the aforementioned questions. Secondly, Milles has systematically divided factors affecting the occurrence of a situation into Troubles and Issues. Troubles are personal private matters that are felt by individuals; Issues are matters that go beyond the individual level, and relates more with the bigger structures, systems in the society and are on a public level.

One could employ the sociological imagination model to analyze social issues. I have chosen recent news from Hong Kong as examples to illustrate the sociological imagination perspective.

For instance, the recent news of senior citizens being abused by elderly centers staff in Hong Kong has caused a wave of discussions in the society concerning elderly living in these care centers. It is essential for us to identify the different levels of factors leading to such occurrence in order to tackle the problem in the future. On a public level, there could be loopholes in the governments geriatric assessments in elderly care centers. For example, there are not enough unexpected checks by government staff in care centers to ensure the centers staffs are giving services that are up to par. The lack of promotions concerning elderly abuse could be a reason to the continuous occurrence of them; some elderly people do not know how to distinguish different kinds of abuse or are not aware of them. (E.g. some are less obvious, such as mental abuse). Not knowing that they can report them, they simply tolerate. On a personal level, although the Social Welfare Department statistics show an increasing number of elderly abuse cases reported, it is believed that many elderly people who are more conservative do not want to report the cases as a matter of dignity. While this is a personal matter felt immediately by them, problems of dignity can also be viewed on a social level as a conservative value commonly conceived by many from the older generation.

Pathological gambling is another issue worth examining. While the occurrence of continuous gambling is clearly related to personal decision and addiction, there are bigger factors that keep on fostering more into gambling addiction. Lets take Italy as an example. Institutionally Italy was forced to relax the strict gambling laws in order to increase state revenues and pay off public debts. The consequence was a surging number of pathological gamblers. Despite such occurrence, pathological gambling is still not recognized by health authorities in Italy as an addiction or a psychological health issue in the national health system. It is therefore hard to keep track of the number of addicts and take further action. Also, there are many slot machines near schools, clubs, hospitals, etc. which encourage and attract new gamblers with their high accessibility.

Cases and examples mentioned above prove that the Willies way of thinking in terms of sociological imagination enables us to grasp the full web of connections between factors; more importantly, it allows us to find the intersection between our individual affairs and situations with factors on political, institutional, social levels, etc. so as to find more precise and effective solutions.