Who are you? How do you know? How do you know you are really who you say you are? How do you
describe yourself? Describe yourself in 6 words. That’s all you have. What was the first term that you used to
describe yourself and why?
The sociological imagination paper is a two-part assignment that you will work on over the course of the
semester. The first part will ask you to reflect on who you are and how you become you? What outside
influences do you understand that have contributed to shape your life? Over the course of the semester, you
will be developing your sociological imagination. C. Wright Mills helps us to understand that the sociological
imagination is “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society” (Mills, 1960).
This process will involve you not to think about yourself in a paper about yourself. Complicated right? Not
really.
Part 1: Start with the 6 words that you would use to describe yourself and reflect on that. Think about the
social, cultural, racial, political and religious influences on those 6 words. For example, if I used my sex as a
description of myself, I must think about why. Also why did I chose to use the word sex rather than gender?
Why is my sex one of my 6 words compared to all the other words that I could have chosen? I would like you
to focus on the first word that you have chose because we would consider that to be a master status in some
cases. Think about why that is the first word of choice. This paper will be completed the first week of class
before you have any understanding of sociology. The idea is to see how much part 1 and part 2 differs.
Part 2: Now that you have learned a significant amount about sociology this is your opportunity to report your
sociological analysis of how you see the world. I would like you to pick 6 words to describe yourself. Like part
1, don’t even think about the words just think about the words that roll off your tongue. Think about if these
words are the same or different? Comment on that. Why or why not? Next, I want you to apply the concepts
and topics that we have learned in class. What sociological theory would you say influences your life the most?
What social, cultural, religious, economic, political, racial and gendered influences have shaped who you are?
Be sure to think about the internal diversity that exist in your development of self (i.e.: because you may look
like a classmate, your experience may be different). Think about how you have evolved and changed over time,
even in this semester. Think about the religious influences that may or may not have shaped your identity (in
most cases they have). Think about your major and the choice that you have made for choosing that major and
the inter-disciplinary role that it plays with other majors including sociology. Think about your situatedness
and how your perspective is guided by this. Think about the dynamics of power that exist in your development.
These elements can be on a micro, mezzo or macro level. Finally, think about the direct, structural and cultural
violence and peace that have shaped you. This paper is intended to be comprehensive, so I would work on it a
little every week. You will be required to include elements of sociology, religious literacy, cultural studies and
the typologies of violence and peace. What you will notice is that it is all connected and related and it is a good
exercise to help us understand how we are developing self. Please use at least 25 sociological terms in the
paper and be sure to bold them. This paper should be about 5-pages long, double-sided and written in APA
format.