Sociological Perspective, Essay Example

A discussion of my family and the roles, functions and influences that can be identified using “sociological perspective / sociological imagination”

In lieu of family in the context of roles, the functions and influences that it has in the light of ‘sociological imagination’, it is clear the holistic ideas and ideals identified through the laid perspective of sociology has had an effect on the way I perceive the family. While thinking about the family, it is not easy to unravel it from the whole picture of sociology, which stresses on ‘human society and social interaction’, tenets that put it right at the middle of sociology and sociological imagination. As elaborated by C. Wright Mills the sociological imagination or perspective enables us to rightly distinguish our own troubles and those that are public issues. It is where the influence of the family on its entirety is manifested (Mills, 1959).

From a distinct standpoint, my family has been shaping the way I associate and socialize with whomever I have come across. When you think about the family, you cannot understand it until you look at the issue of socialization. It is generally what makes the family such a force to reckon with that has cumulative and utmost effects on the entire life of a person today, as well as shaping the future interaction and engagement on a social scale. In the light of the integrationist perspectives, where the focus is on how people try to make sense of their current and everyday social interactions, the socialization dimension from a family standpoint is even made clear. There is no way I would have understood myself, or I can understand myself today without the family ideals to help me in making sense of the world I find myself in at every given moment.

Come to think of it, the family was the first society I first came into contact with and as time progressed and I learnt the ideals that shaped the expectations of the family on my part, I realized that it is through the experience of my large family, the everyday struggles that sometimes became fist fights and word lashing, continued everyday counsel from my parents and the punishment that always followed any action that I carried out but contravened the accepted family values. It was through the family set standards and scales that governed the way I interacted with my neighbors, school mates from as early as kindergarten, where calling certain names was seen as taboo but when my kindergarten friend and immediate neighbor uttered them in their home, it was an acceptable behavior. It made me to finally start creating a distinction between the family and other realms within the wider society, since as I saw from my family standpoint; they seemed weaker ideals that might not be sufficient in dealing with my immediate demanding society at school.

Within the school the family ideals sometimes became a living guide upon which I drew the right direction to follow as well as the necessary motivation to endure and cater for the struggles that came with school life and other humanity within my neighborhood. At first it was impossible to realize the importance of the family interactive proportions that I went through everyday within the wider society, but come to think about it now, the family was everything in the way I handled the society with impeccable ease. This is evident in the line of language where being the vehicle upon which the struggles and ideals of a family and society are felt and depicted; I was able to blossom with the demands of the family and the wider society.

At home the struggle to be heard was not only a requirement but a necessity, since with brothers and sisters older than you it was only logical to be impeccable and effective in your communication, for you to beat the ensuing competition. My parents stressed the need to speak succinct English and to dissuade ourselves from the wider neighborhood ‘unique language’ that they detested vehemently. To them, the neighborhood language spoken a lot in a way that would make any grammar teacher furious had them judging the whole neighborhood as up to ‘no good’ simply because of the level of slang in use. But since the outside society represented so much in life, from the way I interacted with the opposite gender to the level of my friends, I had to balance between the family standards of language and the expectations of the society.

The gender and race part of my life was directly under the effect of the family. The family seemed to be the paradigm through which I reacted to the people I met outside our family home in terms of gender and ethnicity. With the love and appreciation I had for my mother, I never at any time viewed anybody as a weakling as an account of their gender affiliations, as compared to my neighborhood friends who associated different triumphs and challenges according to gender and ethnicity. In the question of ethnicity, my mother’s social demeanor seemed to cloud any negative stereotypes associated with ethnicity. She always entertaining different people from distinct racial backgrounds and until I was past high school did the question of race and ethnicity crop up in my mind, where until now, I always thank my family for the inculcated ideals and behaviors that I got from it and are still affecting me from viewing other people as from another ethnic entity rather than themselves as individuals. In fact, the question of race and socio-economic background were directly opposite each other, which depicts one of my family’s weaknesses. Since we were a modest second class family, the rich seemed to be well accepted within the realm of family ideals, from the desires of the future, the interaction of the moment to the response we had to those within the echelons of economic status. Needless to say, my family’s most friends were rich individuals or people with good jobs and good education.

In the case of culture, norms and morals, my family had an effect that still lasts to the present day, sometimes reinforcing many decisions I make today while at the same time panel-beating my judgment on most issues. Within the norms of the family, the idea of following what my parents passed as the laid out rules and norms made me resent some while most of the ideals I came to respect not a long time ago. With such family norms as discipline being severe, such as being grounded for a week for bringing shame to the family after the grade teacher had complained about my carelessness with school work, they had a lasting effect to how hard I worked to make sure I never faced the wrath of the family or lost face in front of my siblings with whom ours was an intense competition. Moral standards were an expectation my family laid out clearly, succinctly and with straightforward out rightness as if our lives depended on it. Being grounded for a week for name calling and bad behavior at school made the moral atmosphere at home very strong and somehow can be associated to the different paths we took after the clamor for independence was rife, mostly between my elder siblings, who achieved moral degradation after leaving home while some maintained their good ranks in morality. Personally, the effect of my family hammering the importance of respect and responsibility still echo in my mind, mostly when I am about to go contrary to those wishes.

In conclusion, the sociological imagination makes it so clear in the line of my family and the immediate context of society I always find myself in, that the development of our personal imagination does require that we take into account the perspectives of different individuals from diverse backgrounds, with the family being the basic background that shapes all the others (Ashley & Orenstein, 2005).

References

Ashley, D. & Orenstein, D.M. (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements. Boston: Pearson Education.

Jay, M. (1996). The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research 1923-1950. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. London: Oxford University Press.

Wilson, D. R. (2004). Researching Sociology on the Internet. Wadsworth: Thomson.