As students arrive, please read this excerpt from Outliers.
What if you were born in a different place or a different time? How would you be different? Choose a place or time and brainstorm how you might be different.
Applying Sociology: The Sociological Imagination and Outliers
After brainstorming about how you might be different if you lived in a different time or place, read the following excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers. This excerpt is the introduction to the book. It is about a small town in Pennsylvania and how the people in that town were affected by living there.
2. Describe life in Roseto, PA.
3. What did Dr. Wolf set out to study at first?
4. What did he find/conclude at the end of his study?
5. Were the people of Roseto, PA aware of that they were being affected in the way that Dr. Wolf concluded? Explain.
In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell writes about extreme success stories (aka Outliers). In the introduction (the excerpt linked above), we learn that the people who lived in Roseto at that time were affected by the social life there even though they did not realize it. In other words, they were affected by where and when they live. This is is the task of sociology; to understand how people are affected by where and when they live.
This understanding is what an important sociologist, C. Wright Mills, calls having a "sociological imagination". Mills explains "sociological imagination" as seeing the connection between history and biography. That is, who we are (our biography) is determined by where and when we live (our history). As an example of this idea, the people of Roseto were affected by where and when they lived. Because they lived in the town of Roseto at that time, they lived in a way that affected them (without even knowing it) so that they had a much lower chance of getting heart disease and living longer than the rest of the country. This idea might seem simple, but C. Wright Mills, an important sociologist, wrote in 1959, that people often forget this in both their daily life and their research. Mills also adds that using a sociological imagination it is possible to see the private troubles as public issues. In other words, often times a person's struggle in daily life is really part of a larger structural issue that individuals can't always see.
The rest of Gladwell's book, Outliers, uses a sociological imagination to explain extreme success stories; for example, Bill Gates' and Steve Jobs' tremendous success and wealth stemming from where and when they lived:
Gladwell describes how being born in the mid 1950s was particularly fortuitous for those interested in computer programming development (think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, both born in 1955). It also helped to be geographically near what were then called supercomputers, the gigantic predecessors to the thing on which you’re reading this post. Back in the 1960s, when Gates and Jobs were coming of age, a supercomputer took up a whole room and was not something most youngsters would have had a chance to see, let alone work on. But because of their proximity to actual computers, both Gates and Jobs had a leg up on others their age and had the chance to spend hours and hours (10,000 of them in Gladwell’s estimation) learning about programming.
For more info/examples of the sociological imagination, see this post from the Everyday Sociology site that explains how a sociological imagination can be used to analyze how individuals are affected by when and where they live.
6. Do you have any questions about Mills' sociological imagination? Can you explain it?
Imagine Where...
Here is a comparison website for living in countries around the world.Here's advice on how to do it.
Imagine When...
Applying your sociological imagination to where a person lives
Seeing the world with a sociological imagination means being able to see how individuals are affected by where and when they live. Yesterday's lesson applied the sociological imagination to where a person lives. Just ten miles apart from SHS students might have a very different experience. Today we will use our sociological imagination to examine how people might be affected by when they live. Using archives from the school's library, examine the pictures of our school from years past.
The yearbooks are also available online at:
https://archive.org/details/loyolachicago?tab=collection
Other historical archives at LUC include:
Student newspapers. Some of them have been digitized and are available at https://luc.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/SO_be933d80-3ae8-45af-ae3a-d92909ef9461/ but most of them are only available as physical copies in the University Archives. There is not a complete run (for example most of 1963 is missing).
Thomas J. Bryant, SJ, Photograph Collection, 1958-1979. Fr. Bryant was the photographer for the 1958 to 1965 Loyola yearbooks. He also photographed the Lake Shore and Water Tower Campuses; Chicago; Rome, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, and Turkey.
https://luc.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/SO_511c9b32-f82f-48ce-af86-f9545a57c1c2/
Thomas J. Dyba Photograph Collection, 1950-1963 Thomas J. Dyba documented student life at Loyola including athletics, Curtain Guild, and campus scenes, during the 1950s.
https://luc.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/SO_3ab7b45b-0237-4354-904d-28647db81b10/
Joe Smajo Photograph Collection - ca. 1950s. Joe Smajo documented student life and events at Loyola University during the 1950s.
https://luc.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/SO_ea77f806-737d-4a6f-b517-79723d761791/
University Photograph Collection—ca. 1920s to present. Photographs, slides, and negatives documenting buildings, campuses, and student life.
https://luc.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/SO_f6bfa952-29ba-4230-ae06-210b9906b7e3/
In small groups, do a qualitative content analysis of the yearbooks from LUC past. Look for differences between LUC now and then. Answer the following questions:
What are the differences between that year and now?
How might you be different if you had been attending SHS during that time?
Private troubles and public issues
What are the different obstacles that you might've faced then instead of now?
What are some ways that you might feel differently about yourself/school/etc if you attended LUC then?
OK, Boomer!
Another way of applying a sociological imagination to when someone lives is using this research from the Pew Research Center. Click on the link and use the research to see how different generations have been shaped. Remember that when we joke around about different generations (like saying "Ok Boomer"), we are acknowledging that being born in a different generation means being more likely to think a certain way.
Beloit Mindset
Think about how a student being born today might experience the world differently than you? Put another way, what has shaped you that a baby born today might never experience?
This example of sociological imagination is based on the Beloit Mindset list. Beloit College used to publish a list of how the current year's college freshmen have experienced the world differently.
Another example is this video of a child who is trying to use a magazine like an ipad:
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Today's lesson was focused on C. Wright Mills' Sociological Imagination.
- Can you explain what it is?
- Can you connect it to your own life? What are some specific examples to your life - how might you be the person you are because of when and where you are living, or conversely, how might you be a different person based on when and where you live?
Recommended Reading:
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