Sociology 1101, Exercise 2

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In "The Sociological Imagination," sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959) writes: "Consider unemployment. When, in a city of one hundred thousand, one man is unemployed, that is his personal trouble, and for its relief, we may properly look to the character of the man and his skills. But when in a nation of fifty million employees, fiftenn million men are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its solution within the range of opportunities open to any one individual. The very structure of opportunities has collapsed."(p. 9) Mills suggests that the essential elements of what he calls the sociological imagination is our ability to understand the connections between private troubles and public issues. All those Minnesota high school seniors who have at some time in their lives attempted suicide--that's not just thousands of troubled individuals, that's a public issue that reflects some basic change in our society compared to my growing up years in the 1950s. Your assignment is designed to foster that part of the sociological imagination that draws connections between private troubles and larger social issues.

Question 1
Take l0 minutes to list the most important people in your life--family, friends, employers and colleagues. For each of them, list the most difficult personal problems they have faced over the last several years (that you know about, of course). Use initials only; if you include yourself, use a pseudonym if you wish, so that anonymity is protected.
For 2 points

Question 2
Drawing on the lists in 1)., produce a master list of private troubles that recur most frequently. Put a P (for personal) beside those problems which you see as primarily a reflection of people's individual problems of character or ability and an I (for social issue) beside those problems which you see as related to larger issues facing the society. Perhaps you will also want a category C (for human condition), for items which seem neither a reflection of personal shortcomings nor of social issues (for example, the death of someone's infant child).
For 3 points

Question 3
For at least three of the items with an I, explain what you see as the connection between the larger issues and private troubles. How does that connection make a purely personal solution to this problem more difficult.
For 3 points

Question 4
Take one of the problems where you see a strong link with larger social issues and develop a theory that explains the link. For example, if the problem were divorce, try to specify the main independent variables that have produced the dependent variable, high divorce rates, in the society at large.
For 2 points