Globalization, consumption, and the internet are of great importance on their own. However, perhaps more important are the ways in which they interact with one another and interpenetrate with your life as a college student—and the lives of virtually everyone else.
Sociology: Continuity and Change
This chapter has emphasized recent social changes and their impact on society and on sociology, but there is also much continuity in society, as well as in the field of sociology. This section deals with a number of traditional approaches and concerns in sociology that are of continuing relevance to even the most recent sociological issues.
The Sociological Imagination
The systematic study of the social world has always required imagination on the part of sociologists. There are various ways to look at the social world. For example, instead of looking at the world from the point of view of an insider, one can, at least psychologically, place oneself outside that world. The U.S. “war on terror” might look defensible from the perspective of an American, especially one who lived through 9/11, but it would look quite different if you imagined yourself in the place of an innocent Muslim caught in the middle of that war (Philips 2016).
The phenomenon of being able to look at the social world from different, imaginative perspectives attracted the attention of the famous sociologist C. Wright Mills, who in 1959 wrote a very important book titled The Sociological Imagination. He argued that sociologists have a unique perspective—the sociological imagination—that gives them a distinctive way of looking at data or reflecting on the world around them (Selwyn 2015). For example, the fact that many of us no longer use cash is not simply an individual preference, but the consequence of technological changes. Cash is not a viable option for online shopping. Most retailers make it easy and convenient to use credit cards instead of cash at drive-through windows and gasoline stations. Not long ago, Amazon began opening physical grocery stores (Amazon Go) that require consumers to use a mobile app on their smartphones to purchase items. Consumers scan their smartphones when they enter the store, and digital technology detects what they place in their carts. There is no need to stand in line to pay for any items because they are charged to a customer’s Amazon account when the person leaves the store (Rao 2016).
C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) was a prominent post–World War II sociologist who urged the use of the “sociological imagination” to study issues of concern to sociology . . . and to you.
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Private Troubles and Public Issues
The sociological imagination may be most useful in helping sociologists see the linkage between private troubles and public issues. For example, ADHD—attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—can easily be seen as a private trouble. For years there was little public awareness of ADHD, and those who had it were likely to suffer alone. But since the 1980s, it has become clear that ADHD is also a public issue, and it is becoming an increasingly important one not only in the United States but also globally (Ellison 2015). The number of children in the United States ages 3 to 17 diagnosed with ADHD increased from 4.4 million in 2003 to 6.1 million in 2016 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2016a). It is clear that many people suffer from ADHD, which creates a number of larger problems for schools, employers, and society as a whole. The fact that it has become a public issue may make ADHD less of a private trouble for some, as there is now greater public understanding of the problem and many more support groups are available.
Another example of the relationship between private troubles and public issues relates to the fact that women are more likely than men to be concentrated in lower-paying jobs (see Figure 1.5; Field 2018). For example, women are much more likely to be comparatively poorly paid dental hygienists than dentists or legal assistants rather than lawyers. Being limited occupationally creates personal troubles for many women, such as inadequate income and job dissatisfaction. This is also a public issue, not only because the discrepancy between the sexes is unfair to women as a whole but also because society is not benefiting from the many contributions women could be making.
Figure 1.5 Percentages of Women in Selected Occupations, 2016
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2016.
Ask Yourself
Do you agree that private choices sometimes lead to, or are part of, public issues? Can you think of an example from your own life or the life of a family member?
The decision to pursue one college major or career path over another could become a private trouble if a student makes a poor choice or has one forced on him or her. Sociologists have also shown that such choices are very much related to larger public issues. If many people make poor choices, or are forced into them—as women and other minorities often are—this will lead to public issues such as widespread job dissatisfaction and poor performance on the job. Culturally based ideas about gender often shape personal preferences in choosing a college major, and gendered beliefs about career competence steer women and men toward some types of jobs and away from others (Speer 2017). Being in a poorly paid and unsatisfying job is a personal trouble for an individual woman, but it is a public issue when large numbers of women find themselves in this situation.
The Micro–Macro Relationship
The interest in personal troubles and public issues is a specific example of a larger and more basic sociological concern with the relationship between microscopic (micro, or small-scale) social phenomena, such as individuals and their thoughts and actions, and macroscopic (macro, or large-scale) social phenomena, such as groups, organizations, cultures, society, and the world, as well as the relationships among them (Turner 2005). Karl Marx, often considered one of the earliest and most important sociologists, was interested in the relationship between what workers do and think (micro issues) and the capitalist economic system in which the workers exist (a macro issue). To take a more contemporary example, Randall Collins (2009) has sought to develop a theory of violence that deals with everything from individuals skilled in violent interactions, such as attacking those who are weak, to the material resources needed by violent organizations to cause the destruction of other violent organizations. An example of the former type of violent organization is the well-equipped U.S. Navy SEALs team that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 and through that act helped hasten the decline of al-Qaeda. However, the decline of al-Qaeda helped lead to the rise of a new, even more violent, organization, the Islamic State.
In fact, a continuum runs from the most microscopic to the most macroscopic of social realities, with phenomena at roughly the midpoint of this continuum best thought of as meso (middle or intermediate) realities. The definition of sociology presented at the beginning of this chapter fits this continuum quite well. Individual actions and thoughts lie on the micro end of the continuum; groups, organizations, cultures, and societies fall more toward the macro end; and worldwide structures and processes are at the end point on the macro side of the continuum. Although in their own work the vast majority of individual sociologists focus on only very limited segments of this continuum, the field as a whole is concerned with the continuum in its entirety, as well as with