Why You Should Use Your (Sociological) Imagination

 

Host 00:00:08

I appreciate your presence today. In addition, I appreciate you giving me some authority in relation to you for the next 18 or so minutes. And by that, I mean that just being in this position gives me control over you. You're sitting, I'm standing, I can move around, I could dance. You're restricted. Only some of you, not all of you, are visible to me. However, you are positioned so that you can see the stage clearly. We are set up so that I sort of have deference to you. They might argue that is an overly simplistic view of how we were all created. You weren't given a choice of those seats.

00:01:14

We refer to the configuration of everyone present as being socially constructed. This is significant to understand because there will always be winners and losers in any social construction. Arguably, I am winning right now. I get to express my opinions to you on this very one-way, top-down platform. Right? And I seem unfailing, at least in my own eyes. You might also be losing. Are you benefiting from this event just as much as you would if our configuration were different? Right? You might think of other configurations for this. You could all be in a circle with me standing in the center on a stage. I would need to interact with you more. If the lights

00:02:19

If we had a different kind of arrangement, would you learn everything you could? I'm not sure. Right? But the point is that a lot of what we consider to be common sense might be incorrect. Instead, we should use a sociological imagination to examine how we have structured our daily lives. That implies that we should view our actions and beliefs less as the result of our free will and agency and more as the result of historical, rooted cultural, economic, political, and other forces. also enormous magnitude. Our task is to identify these forces. How do they function? How do we fight back? What led to the creation of that historical foundation.

00:03:12

What will happen if I pick up my keys and then release the handle? Will fall to the ground? Okay, you are a knowledgeable audience. You were aware of that. Our social world is governed by social laws, just as our physical world is governed by physical laws. It is our responsibility to identify these laws, and we must do so in order to improve the fairness and democracy of all of our institutions, including the media, the family, politics, education, and religion. I want to use three different cases to further explain the influence institutions have on influencing behavior. I also selected these cases because each one of them involves behavior that would be considered peculiar and, more importantly, problematic or worrisome.

00:04:09

And you want me to use these stereotypes to explain? There may be nothing more strange than assembling in a crowded auditorium, sitting next to a complete stranger, and listening to whoever wants to speak from a stage. It's important to remember that these are stereotypes and offer little actual evidence. They won't matter to many people, unfortunately. We should examine their underlying meanings because they loom large in our cultural imagination. The first one, titled The Code of the Streets, is about a sociologist who conducted extensive research on African Americans in Philadelphia's inner city many years ago. And he discovered that a small subset of these young people would use violence to gain respect.

00:05:03

We would also flaunt nice clothes, pricey jewelry, and other displays of wealth like their cars or other kinds of symbols, am I correct? And once more, these are areas where the majority of families are working families, where kids—contrary to popular belief—care deeply about education and put in a lot of effort in the classroom. However, we did still observe some of these behaviors. Why is that? And as you observed them, you came to understand that their actions were a reaction to the institutional support that many of us take for granted being lacking. You must devise your own means of protection if the criminal justice or law enforcement systems do not appear to be able to keep you safe. 

00:06:52

The second case deals with this hyper-educated pursuit that some Asian American families engage in. That is studying outside of the classroom. Right? You've probably heard that, for instance, Indian American youth consistently place first in spelling bees, right? As an Indian American, I'm here to assure you that's not the case for all of us. You may also be aware of Asian Americans who excel in specific fields of study, such as math and science. And some of them work hard to further their education outside of the classroom, to the point where schools and the people around them are more concerned than they should be. Right, they are viewed as the actions of tiger parents, who are