This paper concerns a specific moment in which I firmly believe that I utilized a sociological imagination in order to make an important decision in my life. By the sociological imagination, I mean the term as used by Mills in order to describe the view of the world that is enabled by the study and understanding of sociology as view that is capable of abstracting itself from the convention opinions of the everyday and considering things critically and openly (1999).
Three years ago I was staying in New York and I found myself near the Occupy Wall Street movement. Several of my friends supported the movement and were keen to camp out and support it. On one particular day several of them headed down to Zucotti park in order to set up camp for what they believed to be at least a week, if not more. However, I made the decision to stay behind and not to join them. At the time this caused consternation amongst my friends who now considered me less radical in my politics as a result. However, I believe now that I was utilizing something akin to the sociological imagination and performing a critical judgement. Far from being based on a conservative politics, this judgement was based on an understanding of certain sociological and financial concepts. First of all, from the study of Durkheim, I was aware that certain protest movements are inevitably related and accommodate by the society that spawns them and in fact provide no challenge to everyday life. It seemed to me that the demands for fairness and taxation made by Occupy were entirely amenable to the status quo. Secondly, I also found some of the rhetoric concerning finance and circulation deeply troubling. As an economics student I knew that the idea of a ‘real economy’ entirely separated from finance was a fallacy and as such that demands for a reduction in finance or the blaming of the crisis on purely financial systems were non-sensical. I also knew that the idea of a finance economy that was described as parasitic on industrial production had a clear genealogy in European fascism.
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"The Sociological Imagination".
All of these things combined made me stay away from Occupy Wall Street. I believe now that this decision was made based on an educated and critical judgement that can be described as the sociological imagination, one that I continue to use every time it is called for.
