Functionalism

Functionalism

1. Answer the questions below to analyze a popular image using a core concept of Merton or Mills:

a. Select one of the key concepts of Merton or Mills from the reader:

Sociological Imagination

b. State a sentence from the reader related to your selected concept and its page number
that supports your analysis:

"[I]magination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another... the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self -- and to see the relations between the two" (96-97).

c. Explain the selected concept and quoted sentence in your own words:

Sociological imagination is the ability of individuals to grasp the big picture from their relatively isolated lives - to see their personal experiences as entwined with the structural arrangements of society and the times in which they live.

Social imagination gives people a framework for understanding the social world. It is about determining the relationship between ordinary lives of people and the wider social forces. Large social forces influence individual behavior and actions of people living in that society.

d. Explain how your selected quote relates with you selected image:
Debt has had a crushing impact on the lives of those who must take student loan to finance their university education in the United States. Tuition fees still continues to rise. While a boy - who is burdened with loans that he needs to pay back - is applying for various jobs and trying very hard to get a job but not getting any offers, he decides to join the underground industry, engaging in gang, criminal, and illegal activities. Analyzing this situation in isolation, one might say that the boy is not trying hard enough to get a job and is performing illegal activities to get easy money. But when one looks at the wider picture and social forces, they might say that the social economic meltdown or the rise in unemployment had a...