Up until now, I've been using this blog mostly to stay in touch with my students while I worked out the kinks in using the student online system. Well, I've worked out the kinks and I won't be teaching again until Fall semester at the end of August, so I'm taking this time to head in a new direction for this blog.
Specifically, I want to explore the sociological imagination here.
The events over the past 2 years in the United States have led me to believe that our biggest challenge in this country is understanding the extent to which we are part of a world greater than ourselves. Americans have long been short-sighted in their vision of the future and short-memory-ed in their recall of their history. We often do not understand any other part of the planet except our own little bit of land. This lack of imagination, that is understand and empathy, is costing us greatly.
I've taught the "sociological imagination" in every sociology class I've ever taught (now around 10 semesters, I'm not going to take the time to count). Almost every sociology instructor/professor does this. It is a "course objective" for practically every sociology class taught at the high school and undergrad level. In all this time, I'm now only reading the entire book that inspired this discipline wide objective: The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills.
Sociology has done a great disservice to C. Wright Mills in my opinion. We have co-opted his concept without fully understanding the challenge he made. This challenge was needed in 1959 and it is needed even more today.
It is my privilege and my mission to explore this concept more fully, to understand and share Mills' challenges to sociology and to American society, and most importantly, my fervent hope to inspire the development of sociological imagination in others.
It truly is "our most needed quality of mind."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment