The Sociological Imagination Case Study Using issues surrounding the death of George Floyd to illustrate the application of sociological imagination and so

The Sociological Imagination Case Study Using issues surrounding the death of George Floyd to illustrate the application of sociological imagination and social location.

You should have read the materials in MO6, Part 2 before posting here How might you use the type of thinking and analysis you read about above (in the article “The Sociological Imagination” and in the application of this type of analysis to abortion) to think about the issues brought up by the death of George Floyd and the resulting protests? This requires you to both understand this mode of thinking and analysis and apply it to a new setting/topic. Start your post by summarizing in 1-2 sentences what you understand this “sociological imagination” to be about, and then explain how it might be used to better understand the issues surrounding the death of George Floyd and the resulting protests. You may not have all the right answers regarding this topic, but at least you could ask some initial questions about this topic that are informed by a “sociological imagination”.

material:

Sociological imagination
Review reading by C. Wright Mills The Promise

One of the big themes in this class is the sociological imagination. We introduced you to this concept in Module 1 and we will ask you to review this important concept here in our last module. Please click here to re-read as needed the article “The Promise”. Remember that the sociological imagination refers not just to using sociological concepts, but broader social science thinking that could include (besides sociology): anthropology, economics, history, political science, and psychology.Next, read two essays below about this concept.

Cultivating the sociological imagination in colleges

Click here to read a one page essay that discusses the importance of cultivating the sociological imagination in colleges (Inside Higher Education, September 23, 2016, “Our History, Our Selves” by Judith Shapiro https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/09/23/cultivating-sociological-imagination-colleges-and-universities-essay). Click here if you prefer to read a PDF version of this article.

Using abortion to illustrate the application of sociological imagination and social location

In May 2019, Alabama legislators voted to ban abortions in nearly all cases. And in Michigan there is an effort to ban abortion after six weeks of pregnancy (most women do not know they are pregnant until after six weeks of pregnancy), 

Michigan is a state in which Democrats drubbed [defeated] Republicans in the 2018 midterms, a Democrat governor has promised to veto anti-abortion legislation, and polling shows the population is solidly supportive of reproductive rights.

Still, it could soon effectively ban abortion.

Conservative activists here with Right To Life and the Michigan Heartbeat Coalition are planning to team up with Republican lawmakers to exploit a constitutional loophole that allows groups to use citizen ballot initiatives to dodge a governor’s veto and implement anti-abortion laws without putting them to voters.

Michigan law permits activist groups to participate in legislating or amending the state’s constitution via ballot drives that let citizens vote on proposed laws. However, there is a loophole that allows the state legislature to make such citizen-initiated proposals straight into law before they are actually put to voters. If a proposal gets enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, the state legislature can simply approve it – foregoing a public vote and also making the law immune to a veto from the governor.

Legal experts say the loophole exists to avoid the cost and resources required to put such proposals to a popular vote. But rightwing special interest groups are increasingly using it to push through unpopular laws without the support of the majority of the electorate or the governor.

Now anti-abortion groups the Heartbeat Coalition and Right To Life are respectively planning initiatives that would ban abortions after six weeks and outlaw dilation and evacuation, which is the most common procedure for second trimester abortions. If they collect enough signatures, they will probably succeed in pushing through the laws, even though the overwhelming majority of Michigan voters and the governor will have no say in the matter. Source: The Guardian, June 8, 2019, “Minority rule: Michigan loophole allows activists to push through abortion bans”, by Tom Perkins, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/08/minority-rule-michigan-loophole-allows-activists-to-push-through-abortion-bans ).

These news items illustrate that there is much diversity with regards to viewpoints about abortion in the United States. Although the social science perspective is not the only valid perspective for examining this issue, in this class it can be a useful perspective for illustrating how the sociological imagination works. The following selection from an introduction sociology textbook uses the sociological imagination to examine debates about abortion in the United States, and it also introduced the related concept “social location”. It will help you review and make sense of the main reading on the sociological imagination, the C. Wright Mills article “The Promise”. Please click here and read pp. 1–5 (you can stop right before the sub-section “What is a social problem on p. 5”) and the section “Sociology and Common Sense” on p. 17. It 

This summary is from an introductory sociology textbook. Although it focuses on the issue of abortion to illustrate these concepts, the important thing for you is to absorb what these concepts are about, not as much to discuss or learn about the issue of abortion itself (although this reading would be a good example of how you’d use the sociological imagination to explain to international students the debates about abortion in the United States, or how international students could try to understand these issues in the United States; while the United States is not the only country where abortion is debated, the way it is debated and its impact on different people is uniquely American, shaped by U.S. culture and by the many levels of social diversity in the United States).