Response discussion

Discussion Peer/Participation Requirements:

Substantive means that you add something new to the discussion, you aren’t just agreeing. This is also a time to ask questions or offer information surrounding the topic addressed by your peers. Personal experience is appropriate for a substantive discussion and should be correlated to the literature.
Instructor follow-ups count toward one of your peer responses.
Remember: Please respect the opinions of others, even if their views differ. In other words, disagree professionally and respectfully.

FIRST RESPONSE:
Sociology is the study of community. It studies the relationship between a society as a whole and observes the behaviors of the society. Using both theory and research, we are given the ability to study how the behavior of society changes. In sociology, we can see how a large group of people’s interactions affects the behavior of people. Society has the ability to affect the sole individual and the sole individual has the ability to affect society. Understanding others takes more than common sense and intuition; by studying sociology and social interaction, we can gain a deeper understanding. We can link behavior patterns together and relate it to the reasoning of people’s behavior. We can relate our personal experiences. Sociology can also help us understand ourselves. By gaining new perspectives, an individual can change their own decisions. A person may want to change due to new realizations (Kendall, 2018).

Sociological imagination is having the ability to perceive and distinguish experiences. With sociological imagination, one can observe the relationship between themself and society. We can gain awareness and understand that our everyday personal experiences are connected to a larger group of people. In order to gain a global sociological imagination, we have to take into account the challenges that the world experiences overall. These common experiences lead to global changes. Some experiences that may be studied in order to gain a global sociological imagination include natural disasters, politics, economics, terrorism, and changes in the environment.

Many social thinkers such as Max Weber were concerned with social change because they wanted improvements in their everyday life. They saw and felt injustice and wanted to change that. Social thinkers yearned for better housing, more space, better working and living conditions, wealth, and safety. Industrialization gave way to technological advancements, but also generated lots of social problems. Many social problems that occurred in the 19th century are still thriving in today’s society. I am concerned with the social change occurring around me because it has a lot of power. Social change can lead me to make decisions that I am not proud of. On the other hand, social change can help me to make decisions that I am proud of. Social change has the ability to deprive me of things that make me happy, including going on adventures, connecting with people, etc.

SECOND RESPONSE:
What is sociology, and how can it help us understand others and ourselves? The study of sociology leads us into areas of society that we might otherwise have ignored or misunderstood. The basic insight of sociology is that human behavior is shaped by the groups to which people belong to and by how the social interaction takes place within these groups. We are who we are and how we behave in the way we do is because we happen to live in a particular society at a particular point in space and time. Most people tend to accept their social world unquestioningly, as something "natural." By using the sociological perspective, it enables us to see society as a temporary social product, created by human beings and highly capable of being changed by them as well.

What is meant by the sociological imagination, and how can we develop a global sociological imagination? Without the sociological perspective which has been called the "sociological imagination”, people would see the world through their limited experience of a small orbit of family, friends, co-workers. According to C Wright Mills, social imagination helps us understand how seemingly personal troubles, such as suicide, are actually related to larger social forces. The sociological imagination allows us to stand apart mentally from our limited experience and see the link between private concerns and social issues. This allows us to trace the connection between the patterns and events of our own and the patterns and events of our society.

Why were many early social thinkers concerned with social change? Are you concerned with the social change taking place around you? Early industrialization and urbanization increased rapidly in the late eighteenth century, and social thinkers began to examine the consequences of these powerful forces. As a result of rapid social change in societies, early thinkers focused on social order and stability, and many of their ideas had a dramatic influence on modern sociology. Some of the same processes are taking place on our own lifetime. With the rapid introduction of the online Facebook Meta Verse and the many new ways people will eventually interact, via some form of alternate landscape, across the globe is astounding. I believe the integration of a virtual society is inevitable and how we proceed as humanity is going to be interesting to say the least.