What is Sociological Imagination?

This concept comes to us from famed sociologist C. Wright Mills, the sociological imagination was defined as such; “the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society”. This theory is relevant for many reasons, for one, it definitely comes into play with the sociological perspective helping to strengthen one’s perception of society even more. What it means is basically to put yourself outside the box and see society from a further standpoint. Essentially to not look to closely, but places importance on taking a step back in order to effectively view the, “whole picture”. It’s more about observation than anything, really, allowing sociologists to view society from an unbiased and unprejudiced stance. Sociological aspects such as social norms and motives also have very much to do with this concept, explaining that factors among others such as these, lead to certain outcomes in society, or put another way, we can observe without doubt that action leads to outcome and there are many factors that support this. Factors that I am talking about are as mentioned norms and motives, “what we want to gain”, social context, (where, nationality, ethnicity, associations).