personal biography sociology

Module 1: Foundations of Sociology

The sociological imagination, learning outcomes.

Define the sociological imagination
Apply the sociological imagination

A person standing on a dot in the center of a wheel, with lines connecting him to nine other people, each standing on their own colored dots.

Figure 1. The sociological imagination enables you to look at your life and your own personal issues and relate them to other people, history, or societal structures.

Many people believe they understand the world and the events taking place within it, even though they have not actually engaged in a systematic attempt to understanding the social world, as sociologists do. In this section, you’ll learn to think like a sociologist.

The sociological imagination , a concept established by C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) provides a framework for understanding our social world that far surpasses any common sense notion we might derive from our limited social experiences. Mills was a contemporary sociologist who brought tremendous insight into the daily lives of society’s members. Mills stated: “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” [1] . The sociological imagination is making the connection between personal challenges and larger social issues. Mills identified “troubles” (personal challenges) and “issues” (larger social challenges), also known as biography, and history, respectively. Mills’ sociological imagination allows individuals to see the relationships between events in their personal lives (biography), and events in their society (history). In other words, this mindset provides the ability for individuals to realize the relationship between their personal experiences and the larger society in which they live their lives.

Personal troubles are private problems experienced within the character of the individual and the range of their immediate relation to others. Mills identified that we function in our personal lives as actors and actresses who make choices about our friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within our control. We have a degree of influence on the outcome of matters within this personal level. A college student who parties 4 nights out of 7, who rarely attends class, and who never does his homework has a personal trouble that interferes with his odds of success in college. However, when 50% of all college students in the United States never graduate, we label it as a larger social issue.

Larger social or public issues are those that lie beyond one’s personal control and the range of one’s inner life. These pertain to broader matters of organization and process, which are rooted in society rather than in the individual. Nationwide, students come to college as freshmen who are often ill-prepared to understand the rigors of college life. They haven’t often been challenged enough in high school to make the necessary adjustments required to succeed in college. Nationwide, the average teenager text messages, surfs the Net, plays video games, watches TV, spends hours each day with friends, and works at least part-time. Where and when would he or she get experience focusing attention on college studies and the rigorous self-discipline required to transition into college?

The real power of the sociological imagination is found in how we learn to distinguish between the personal and social levels in our own lives. This includes economic challenges. For example, many students do not purchase required textbooks for college classes at both 2-year colleges and 4-year colleges and universities. Many students simply do not have the money to purchase textbooks, and while this can seem like a “choice,” some of the related social issues include rising tuition rates, decreasing financial aid, increasing costs of living and decreasing wages. The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement has sought to address this personal trouble as a public issue by partnering with institutional consortia and encouraging large city and state institutions to adopt OER materials. A student who does not purchase the assigned textbook might see this as a private problem, but this student is part of a growing number of college students who are forced to make financial decisions based on structural circumstances.

A majority of personal problems are not experienced as exclusively personal issues, but are influenced and affected by social norms, habits, and expectations. Consider issues like homelessness, crime, divorce, and access to healthcare. Are these all caused by personal choices, or by societal problems? Using the sociological imagination, we can view these issues as interconnected personal and public concerns.

For example, homelessness may be blamed on the individuals who are living on the streets. Perhaps their personal choices influenced their position; some would say they are lazy, unmotivated, or uneducated. This approach of blaming the victim fails to account for the societal factors that also lead to homelessness—what types of social obstacles and social failings might push someone towards homelessness? Bad schools, high unemployment, high housing costs, and little family support are all social issues that could contribute to homelessness. C. Wright Mills, who originated the concept of the sociological imagination, explained it this way: “the very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals.”

Watch the following video to see an example of how the sociological imagination is used to understand the issue of obesity.

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

Learning outcomes.

Define the sociological imagination
Apply the sociological imagination

Watch the following video to see an example of how the sociological imagination is used to understand the issue of obesity.

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

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What Is Sociological Imagination: Definition & Examples

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The term sociological imagination describes the type of insight offered by sociology; connecting the problems of individuals to that of broader society.
C. Wright Mills, the originator of the term, contended that both sociologists and non-academics can develop a deep understanding of how the events of their own lives (their biography) relate to the history of their society. He outlined a list of methods through which both groups could do so.
Mills believed that American society suffered from the fundamental problems of alienation, moral insensibility, threats to democracy, threats to human freedom, and conflict between bureaucratic rationality and human reason, and that the development of the sociological imagination could counter these.

What is Sociological Imagination?

Sociological imagination, an idea that first emerged in C. Wright Mills’ book of the same name, is the ability to connect one’s personal challenges to larger social issues.

The sociological imagination is the ability to link the experience of individuals to the social processes and structures of the wider world.

It is this ability to examine the ways that individuals construct the social world and how the social world and how the social world impinges on the lives of individuals, which is the heart of the sociological enterprise.

This ability can be thought of as a framework for understanding social reality, and describes how sociology is relevant not just to sociologists, but to those seeking to understand and build empathy for the conditions of daily life.

When the sociological imagination is underdeveloped or absent in large groups of individuals for any number of reasons, Mills believed that fundamental social issues resulted.

Sociological Imagination Theory

C. Wright Mills established the concept of sociological imagination in the 20th century.

Mills believed that: “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” the daily lives of society’s members and the history of a society and its issues.

He referred to the problems that occur in everyday life, or biography, as troubles and the problems that occur in society, or history, as issues.

Mills ultimately created a framework intended to help individuals realize the relationship between personal experiences and greater society (Elwell, 2002).

Before Mill, sociologists tended to focus on understanding how sociological systems worked, rather than exploring individual issues. Mills, however, pointed out that these sociologists, functionalists chief among them, ignored the role of the individual within these systems.

In essence, Mills claimed in his book, The Sociological Imagination , that research had come to be guided more by the requirements of administrative concerns than by intellectual ones.

He critiqued sociology for focusing on accumulating facts that only served to facilitate the administrative decisions of, for example, governments.

Mills believed that, to truly fulfill the promise of social science, sociologists and laypeople alike had to focus on substantial, society-wide problems, and relate those problems to the structural and historical features of the society and culture that they navigated (Elwell, 2002).

Mills’ Guidelines for Social Scientists

In the appendix of The Sociological Imagination, Mills set forth several guidelines that would lead to “intellectual craftsmanship.” These are, paraphrased (Mills, 2000; Ellwell, 2002):

Scholars should not split work from life, because both work and life are in unity.

Scholars should keep a file, or a collection, of their own personal, professional, and intellectual experiences.

Scholars should engage in a continual review of their thoughts and experiences.

Scholars may find a truly bad sociological book to be as intellectually stimulating and conducive to thinking as a good one.

Scholars must have an attitude of playfulness toward phrases, words, and ideas, as well as a fierce drive to make sense of the world.

The sociological imagination is stimulated when someone assumes a willingness to view the world from the perspective of others.

Sociological investigators should not be afraid, in the preliminary and speculative stages of their research, to think in terms of imaginative extremes, and,

Scholars should not hesitate to express ideas in language that is as simple and direct as possible. Ideas are affected by how they are expressed. When sociological perspectives are expressed in deadening language, they create a deadened sociological imagination.

Mills’ Original Social Problems

Mills identified five main social problems in American society: alienation , moral insensibility, threats to democracy, threats to human freedom, and the conflict between bureaucratic rationality and human reason (Elwell, 2015).

1. Threats to Democracy and Freedom

The end result of these problems of alienation, political indifference, and the economic and political concentration of power, according to Mills, is a serious threat to democracy and freedom.

He believed that, as bureaucratic organizations became large and more centralized, more and more power would be placed into the hands of a small elite (Elwell, 2006).

2. Alienation

Mills believed that alienation is deeply rooted in how work itself works in society; however, unlike Marx, C. Wright Mills does not attribute alienation solely to the means of production, but to the modern division of labor .

Mills observed that, on the whole, jobs are broken up into simple, functional tasks with strict standards. Machines or unskilled workers take over the most tedious tasks (Elwell, 2002).

As the office was automated, Mills argued, authority and job autonomy became the attributes of only those highest in the work hierarchy. Most workers are discouraged from using their own judgment, and their decision-making forces them to comply with the strict rules handed down by others.

In this loss of autonomy, the average worker becomes alienated from their intellectual capacities and work becomes an enforced chore (Elwell, 2015).

3. Moral Insensibility

The second major problem that C. Wright Mills identified in modern American society was that of moral insensibility. He pointed out that, as people had lost faith in their leaders in government, religion, and the workplace, they became apathetic.

He considered this apathy a “spiritual condition” that underlined many problems — namely, moral insensibility. As a result of moral insensibility, people within society accept atrocities, such as genocide, committed by their leaders.

Mills considered the source of cruelty to be moral insensibility and, ultimately, the underdevelopment of the sociological imagination (Elwell, 2002).

4. Personal Troubles

Personal troubles are the issues that people experience within their own character, and in their immediate relationships with others. Mills believed that people function in their personal lives as actors and actresses who make choices about friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within their control.

As a result, people have some issue on the outcomes of events on a personal level. For example, an individual employee who spends most of his work time browsing social media or online shopping may lose their job. This is a personal problem.

However, hundreds of thousands of employees being laid-off en masse constitutes a larger social issue (Mills, 2000).

5. Social and Public Issues

Social and public issues, meanwhile, are beyond one”s personal control. These issues pertain to the organization and processes of society, rather than individuals. For example, universities may, as a whole, overcharge students for their education.

This may be the result of decades of competition and investment into each school”s administration and facilities, as well as the narrowing opportunities for those without a college degree.

In this situation, it becomes impossible for large segments of the population to get a tertiary education without accruing large and often debilitating amounts of debt (Mills, 2000).

The sociological imagination allows sociologists to distinguish between the personal and sociological aspects of problems in the lives of everyone.

Most personal problems are not exclusively personal issues; instead, they are influenced and affected by a variety of social norms, habits, and expectations. Indeed, there is often confusion as to what differentiates personal problems and social issues (Hironimus-Wendt & Wallace, 2009).

For example, a heroin addiction may be blamed on the reckless and impulsive choices of an addict. However, this approach fails to account for the societal factors and history that led to high rates of heroin addiction, such as the over-prescribing of opiate painkillers by doctors and the dysregulation of pharmaceutical companies in the United States.

Sociological imagination is useful for both sociologists and those encountering problems in their everyday lives. When people lack in sociological imagination, they become vulnerable to apathy: considering the beliefs, actions, and traditions around them to be natural and unavoidable.

This can cause moral insensitivity and ultimately the commitment of cruel and unjust acts by those guided not by their own consciousness, but the commands of an external body (Hironimus-Wendt & Wallace, 2009).

Fast Fashion

Say that someone is buying themselves a new shirt. Usually, the person buying the shirt would be concerned about their need for new clothing and factors such as the price, fabric, color, and cut of the shirt.

At a deeper level, the personal problem of buying a shirt may provoke someone to ask themselves what they are buying the shirt for, where they would wear it, and why they would participate in an activity where they would wear the shirt over instead of some other activity.

People answer these questions on a personal level through considering a number of different factors. For example, someone may think about how much they make, and how much they can budget for clothing, the stores available in the community, and the styles popular in one”s area (Joy et al., 2012).

On a larger level, however, the questions and answers to the question of what shirt to buy — or even if to buy a shirt at all — would differ if someone were provided a different context and circumstances.

For example, if someone had come into a sudden sum of wealth, they may choose to buy an expensive designer shirt or quit the job that required them to buy the shirt altogether. If someone had lived in a community with many consignment shops, they may be less likely to buy a new shirt and more likely to buy one that was pre-owned.

If there were a cultural dictate that required people to, say, cover their shoulders or breasts — or the opposite, someone may buy a more or less revealing shirt.

On an even higher level, buying a shirt also represents an opportunity to connect the consumption habits of individuals and groups to larger issues.

The lack of proximity of communities to used-clothing stores on a massive scale may encourage excessive consumption, leading to environmental waste in pollution. The competition between retailers to provide the cheapest and most fashionable shirts possible results in, as many have explored, the exploitation of garment workers in exporting countries and large amounts of co2 output due to shipping.

Although an individual can be blamed or not blamed for buying a shirt made more or less sustainably or ethically, a discussion of why an individual bought a certain shirt cannot be complete without a consideration of the larger factors that influence their buying patterns (Joy et al., 2012).

The “Global Economic Crisis”

Dinerstein, Schwartz, and Taylor (2014) used the 2008 economic crisis as a case study of the concept of sociological imagination, and how sociology and other social sciences had failed to adequately understand the crisis.

The 2008 global economic crisis led to millions of people around the world losing their jobs. On the smallest level, individuals were unable to sustain their lifestyles.

Someone who was laid off due to the economic downturn may have become unable to make their mortgage or car payments, leading to a bank foreclosing their house or repossessing their car.

This person may also be unable to afford groceries, need to turn to a food bank, or have credit card debt to feed themselves and their families. As a result, this person may damage their credit score, restricting them from, say, taking out a home ownership loan in the future.

The sociological imagination also examines issues like the great recession at a level beyond these personal problems. For example, a sociologist may look at how the crisis resulted from the accessibility of and increasing pressure to buy large and normally unaffordable homes in the United States.

Some sociologists, Dinerstein, Schwartz, and Taylor among them, even looked at the economic crisis as unveiling the social issue of how academics do sociology. For example, Dinerstein, Schwatz, and Taylor point out that the lived experience of the global economic crisis operated under gendered and racialized dynamics.

Many female immigrant domestic laborers, for example, lost their jobs in Europe and North America as a result of the crisis.

While the things that sociologists had been studying about these populations up until that point — migration and return — are significant, the crisis brought a renewed focus in sociology into investigating how the negative effects of neoliberal globalization and the multiple crises already impacting residents of the global South compound during recessions (Spitzer & Piper, 2014).

Bhambra, G. (2007). Rethinking modernity: Postcolonialism and the sociological imagination . Springer.

Dinerstein, A. C., Schwartz, G., & Taylor, G. (2014). Sociological imagination as social critique: Interrogating the ‘global economic crisis’. Sociology, 48 (5), 859-868.

Elwell, F. W. (2002). The Sociology of C. Wright Mills .

Elwell, F. W. (2015). Macrosociology: four modern theorists . Routledge.

Hironimus-Wendt, R. J., & Wallace, L. E. (2009). The sociological imagination and social responsibility. Teaching Sociology, 37 (1), 76-88.

Joy, A., Sherry Jr, J. F., Venkatesh, A., Wang, J., & Chan, R. (2012). Fast fashion, sustainability, and the ethical appeal of luxury brands. Fashion theory, 16 (3), 273-295.

Mills, C. W. (2000). The sociological imagination . Oxford University Press.

Spitzer, D. L., & Piper, N. (2014). Retrenched and returned: Filipino migrant workers during times of crisis. Sociology, 48 (5), 1007-1023.

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The Intersection of Biography and History

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society

I couldn’t help but think of Mills’ words when I came across this video at Crooked Timber . In it, French children are asked to interpret technologies that, though just a few years out of date, pre-date their biography. While their guesses are creative and humorous, they also neatly demonstrate that, no matter how unique we are, we are also products of our time.

Comments 22

Ellipsisknits — january 24, 2011.

Interesting that the recognized almost all of the items as some sort of technology (media, camera, pay card, video player), as opposed to say, a kitchen appliance, or a decorative item.

I wonder if the children were primed for that sort of response, or if they were picking up in design similarities through our technological past.

(btw, the video is subtitled in english, and is therefore viewable without the audio)

Camille — January 24, 2011

I first saw this video here http://bigbrowser.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/01/05/retour-vers-le-futur-des-enfants-face-aux-disquettes/ and they say the kids are Canadian (which rely fits with their accent). Not that this changes any interpretation you can make about the video.

Angela — January 24, 2011

Interesting. I'm 18, and these mostly pre-date me, or were close to obsolete when I was a young child. Yet I still recognized them. Maybe when these kids are my age they will have learned about older technology? Or is the new generation not learning about it at all?

Chlorine — January 24, 2011

... I'm 24 and have no idea what that first yellow thing is.

Also, the YouTube comments are pretty terrifyingly racist and basically imply that the one kid knew how to "scratch" the record player -because- he is black, as though this is some inborn ability of his or something.

Nissi — January 24, 2011

Youtube... pffff... sometimes I just wish the hole bunch of those comment writers were trolls.

We watched this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGIZ-zUvotM in my cultural anthropology tutorial for freshman students as an example of rituals but ended up talking about the comments underneath. That´s almost hate those comments transmit. Makes me shiver...

Erin — January 24, 2011

I found it interesting that while many of the technologies were reframed as modern things (eg it's for an iPod), a number of the kids suggested 'cassette' as a possibility. Perhaps cassette tapes are more ubiquitous than I'd assumed - I certainly had considerable trouble trying to find some blank ones for my outdated car stereo last year!

Stephanie — January 24, 2011

Tres chouette!

April — January 25, 2011

Psst: those kids are actually Quebecois.

A. Helin — January 25, 2011

I love the kid who starts scratching the vinyl on the player and you can tell he's having an epiphany of where that sound comes from when it's used in music (that doesn't even come on vinyl anymore).

Andrew Lane — January 10, 2012

I've always wanted a rotary telephone. I don't mind that it takes longer to dial the number. I feel like that is the best vintage "artifact" around.

Also, when the kid starts playing the record like a DJ, I laughed.

Alte Technik, von jungen Menschen erklärt | Funktionsstelle — October 22, 2012

[...] Socological Images) Dieser Eintrag wurde veröffentlicht in Posts und verschlagwortet mit devices, geräte, history, [...]

T. Sanchez — October 27, 2013

http://youtu.be/gdSHeKfZG7c

The video with english subtitles, thanks for this post great video to show in class when discussing the sociological imagination

Jackie — June 17, 2014

Wow. My husband is a DJ. He previously used the record player like the little boy had. When he began to scratch it brought back so many memories.

Obsolete Tech | pollygon — June 23, 2014

[…] current pace of technological advancement is staggering. This video I saw on Sociological Images is a great example of how fast the technology our society uses is changing. Children from Quebec […]

charles wright mills biography – QBXS — May 21, 2019

[…] The Intersection of Biography and History – Sociological […]

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Sociology Meets Biography: Peter Berger and the Social Construction of Discontinuous Selves

Published: 21 January 2020
Volume 57 , pages 94–96, ( 2020 )

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Eviatar Zerubavel 1

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This article examines the idea of a “sociology of biography.” As such, it focuses on the social construction of both biographical continuity and biographical discontinuity. It explores in particular the contribution of Harold Garfinkel to the study of biographical continuity and Peter Berger to the study of biographical discontinuity.

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Epilog: Reflections on the Futures of Psychobiography

Indulgent or Engaged? A Duoethnographic Excerpt of Personally Disruptive Epiphanies

“On the Margins of One Group and Three Countries”: Exile, Belonging, and the Sociological Imagination in Reinhard Bendix’s From Berlin to Berkeley

See also Simmel 1898 on the mental “persistence” of social groups.

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a/b: Auto/Biography Studies
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Biographical Sociology: Struggles over an Emergent Sociological Practice
Jeffrey Shantz (bio)

Postmodern research has questioned the privilege of dominant research methodologies for obtaining social knowledge. This has included a critique of traditional qualitative research practices. As part of these criticisms new research practices have recently been developed. Specifically, emergent practices like auto/biographical sociology, which include personalized accounts of authors' experiences, have answered a call to give greater attention to the ways in which the sociologist or ethnographer interacts with the culture being researched. Biographical sociology includes various forms of research that connect the personal with the cultural, situating the researching subject within specific social contexts. Texts from biographical sociologists present their research as relational and institutional stories affected by history, culture, and social structures (which are also affected by the researcher). The texts, which vary in their emphasis on self, culture, and process, offer means to examine closely self/other interactions. In this paper I scrutinize the emergence of what might be called biographical sociology or sociological biography—practices that encompass biography, autobiography, autoethnography, and various forms of life writing and creative presentations of the self.

Biographical sociology offers means to examine closely self/other interactions within sociological research, challenging accepted views about social "scientific" authorship. By altering how researchers are expected to read and write, biographical sociology might allow social researchers to avoid the constraints of dominant "realist" modes of ethnography in which emphasis is placed on the explanatory powers of the informed social science expert while opening new options regarding what sociologists might write about, including explanations of othering practices in research and analyses of difference construction within social sciences. Biographical sociology encourages a practical rethinking of terms such as validity, reliability, and objectivity, offering a critique of representation and legitimation within social science disciplines. These are perhaps some of the reasons that this [End Page 113] emergent practice remains controversial within social sciences such as sociology.

Biography assumes an ambiguous role in sociological and historical research both as a tool of social research or, as some critics claim, an escape from social research. This article offers outlines for researchers interested in developing biographical sociology or sociological biography while also outlining how such work has itself been a site or subject of struggle within sociology. I also discuss the problematic nature of such approaches and their limits in relation to dominant perspectives on research. I suggest that biographical sociology offers critical researchers a useful new tool for understanding complex social relations in contemporary (perhaps postmodern) contexts.

New Directions: Biographical Sociology

When speaking of biographical sociology I intend to emphasize an openness to various and differently labeled approaches to research and writing, including those that have been identified as biography, autobiography, autoethnography, and so on. Thus, in what follows I will often use the term auto/biography to indicate the inclusion of multiple approaches. Bogusia Temple, following Brian Roberts, defines biographical research in sociology as "research undertaken on individual lives employing autobiographical documents, interviews or other sources and presenting accounts in various forms (e.g., in terms of editing, written, visual or oral presentation, and degree of researcher's narration and reflexivity)" ( Temple 8 ). Biographical sociology is an encompassing term that speaks to a willingness to engage with sociology and a variety of practices that have typically been marginalized or excluded within the discipline. Those sociologists who have been influenced by biographical research, such as Temple, Roberts, and Liz Stanley rather consistently argue for an inclusive definition of the approach, one that does not seek to apply rigid barriers or methodological or definitional enclosures around the notions of biography and autobiography. As Temple notes, "There is no consensus on the boundaries between terms such as narrative, biography, life history or life story and researchers use the terms in overlapping and different ways" (8). This position is supported by others' attempts to open up sociological explorations, such as BRE, Stephanie Taylor and Karen Littleton. Such researchers recognize that there is some fluidity marking these terms and practices especially in their encounters with sociology. For example, the sociologist approaching biography infuses biographical work with her or his own analysis, interpretation, history, and readings, thus adding an autobiographical aspect to biographical works. [End Page 114] Similarly, autobiographical works of sociology take on biographical characteristics in the engagement with theory, theorists, teachers, and disciplines. Temple, following Roberts, argues that sociologists include "research that spans across differently labeled research to learn from debates rather than try to adjudicate between definitions of what constitutes a particular kind of research" (8). Inasmuch as there remain those who seek to establish, patrol, and maintain such boundaries, it is true that biographical sociologists (e.g., Merton, Sparkes, Roberts, Given) pose an additional challenge to received notions of what is acceptable or appropriate in biography and autobiography.

Certainly encouragement for a biographical turn in sociology can be found within other social science disciplines. Biographical case histories have played a key role in elaborating various traditions within psychology, including, of course, Freud's works. Marjorie Shostak's Nisa: The Life and Words of a Kung Woman has become a standard text for anthropologists since its release in 1981. Notably, Shostak's education was in literature. In addition, biography has played an important role in recent works of critical philosophy and social theory, including texts such as Michel Foucault's I, Pierre Rivière, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister and My Brother . . . : A Case of Parricide in the 19th Century . Indeed Foucault's work should provide an example to sociology of the value of biographical work to social analysis. Unfortunately, despite these significant examples, there has been much reluctance and even opposition within sociology to consider an engagement with biographical work as an acceptable part of sociological practice, as will be discussed below.

While biographical research has received growing attention within disciplines such as anthropology, literature, and history, sociologists have been left on the sidelines of discussion around this emergent methodology. I view that as unfortunate since biographical sociology offers a potentially useful methodological alternative as sociologists grapple with questions of community, identity, values, and structure within the current context. It might also take sociological discussions of autobiography and biography beyond viewing these texts as resources or data towards discussing them as topics for investigation in their own right ( Stanley, "On" 41-52 ).

The lack of involvement from sociologists is particularly curious if one remembers C. Wright Mills's "insistence that unless sociology works at the level of biography it does not and cannot work at the level of structure" (qtd. in Stanley, "On" 51 ). Mills coined the phrase "sociological imagination" to speak to the need to understand the interplay between public issues (social structures) and personal troubles (biography). In his view it is imperative that sociologists understand [End Page 115] the links between apparently private problems of the individual and broader social institutions. For Mills, neither the history of society nor the life of an individual can be grasped without understanding both. The sociological imagination develops a quality of mind that offers people a solution to the regular feeling of being trapped by seemingly uncontrollable circumstances within highly stratified, industrial societies. According to Mills, "[The sociological imagination] enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals . . . enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society . . . [and] between 'the personal troubles of milieu' and 'the public issues of social structure'" ( Roberts and Kyllonen 3 ). The recent impetus for a turn towards biographical sociology can be found in the postmodern crisis of representation ( Spry 710 ). Key contributors to Continental Philosophy 1 and critical social theory 2 have argued that auto/biography plays an integral role in the construction and development of both individual and cultural meanings and political and economic engagement. As Taylor and Littleton note, postmodern theorists challenged simplistic and uncritical analyses in which people were reduced to simple demographic identity categories (e.g., "female," "black," "working class") in relation to positionality within a presumed social structure (24). Such analyses ignored or downplayed how fragmentary identities intersect even where they offer some overarching sense of continuity. Postmodern theory and practice pose a response to realist agendas in ethnography and sociology "which privilege the researcher over the subject, method over subject matter" ( Spry 710 ). According to C. Ellis, the work of the biographical sociologist involves moving back and forth between a broad sociological or ethnographic lens focusing on the social and cultural aspects of experience and a more personal lens that exposes a researching self that moves by and through cultural interpretations which are often resisted (669-83). Biographical sociology explores the interplay of biography, culture, and history.

Within this approach, biographical sociologists "identify zones of contact, conquest, and the contested meanings of self and culture that accompanies the exercise of representational authority" ( Neuman 191 ). In this work, actions, emotions, and ideas are featured as relational and institutional stories influenced by history and social structures that are themselves engaged in dialectical relations with actions, thoughts, and feelings ( Ellis 669-70 ). As Brian Roberts and Riitta Kyllonen describe it, "Biographical Sociology, in general terms, can be said to be an attempt to understand the changing experiences and outlooks of individuals in their daily lives, what they see as important, and how to provide interpretations of the accounts they [End Page 116] give of their past, present and future" (3). This holds as much for sociologists themselves who are engaged in auto/biographical work as for the sources or subjects of biographical sociology. Temple notes that such an "epistemological position acknowledges that there is no way to make 'objective' knowledge claims from outside of your position in the social world" (9). It also means that researchers cannot escape their position in the world by reference to objectivity or science. This does not mean that there is no reality. While sociology is understood as not strictly referential, it is constructed within and mediates real world situations ( Roberts 3-6 ).

Biographical sociology offers a unique approach to understanding individual-society relations. Moving beyond stale structure-agency debates, it allows for a situated analysis of agency-in-structure, of the reflective individual engaging society. It is not, as critics would maintain, simply the study of an individual life. Rather, biographical sociology "involves sociologists questioning and indeed rejecting conventional sharp distinctions between structure and action, and relatedly, individual and collective, as presenting an over-dichotomized view of social life. It means rejecting any notion that a 'life' can be understood as a representation of a single self in isolation from networks of interwoven biographies" ( Stanley and Morgan 2 ). For biographical sociologists it is understood that meanings are constructed, maintained, and modified in expression and interaction, rather than signifying stable properties of objects ( Taylor and Littleton 24 ). People's biographies are also understood to be constructed and enacted, to arise through performative processes that are engaged with and within social structures, networks, and practices; as Taylor and Littleton note, "a further assumption is that a speaker is active in this identity work which is an ongoing project that includes constructing a personal biography. . . . However, identities are also social because they are resourced and constrained by larger social understandings which prevail in the speakers' social and cultural context" (24).

People's identities are complex composites of who they create themselves to be and present to the world, and who that world makes them and constrains them to be (22-24). Biography is shaped both by the particular and specific circumstances of people's lives and the meanings circulating within the broader society, culture, and polity. These meanings include established, and even enforced, categorizations of people and contexts and the values attached to those categories (23). These meanings, however, are variously adopted, resisted, and re-worked in the construction of personal identity or biography. Biographies are also situated constructions, which is in fact another [End Page 117] possible benefit of biographical sociology. It provides a window into the struggles involved in these processes.

Biography as Critical Sociology

Among the key interventions in the development of sociology in an auto/biographical direction has been the groundbreaking work of Liz Stanley, which has consistently engaged and challenged issues of representation, reflexivity, and voice in research. In discussions that predate most of the writing on biographical sociology by several years, Stanley argues that sociological discussions of what she terms auto/biography have two parallel sites of origin. The first is the feminist concern with reflexivity within sociological research processes (as discussed above). The second is Robert Merton's discussion of "sociological autobiography." Through his investigation of the dynamics of "sociological autobiography," Merton draws "analytic attention to the way that insider and outsider positions systematically influence what kind of knowledge is produced" (qtd. in Stanley, "On" 42 ). These differently located and produced knowledges raise crucial issues for the sociology of knowledge, notably affirming that reality is not singular; it is not necessarily the same event for which people are only constructing different descriptions. Stanley suggests that auto/biography "disrupts conventional taxonomies of life writing, disputing its divisions of self/other, public/private, and immediacy/ memory" ("On" 41). In her view, "'the auto/biographical I' signals the active inquiring presence of sociologists in constructing, rather than discovering, knowledge" (41).

Crucial in this movement are processes of reflexivity, a key component of feminist praxis. Reflexivity treats the researching self as a subject for intellectual inquiry "and it encapsulates the socialised, non-unitary and changing self posited in feminist thought" (44). In feminist praxis, conventional dichotomies or binaries that separate the social and the individual, the personal and the political, are refused: "'Personal life' and 'ideas' are both socialised in this standpoint, the conventional individualistic treatment of them being thoroughly rejected in favour of conceptualising them as socially-constructed and socially re/produced" (44). Academic feminist work has focused on women's auto/biographies in part because "feminism as a social movement is concerned with the re/making of lives, of inscribing them as gendered (and raced, and classed, with sexualities), and also with inscribing a wider range of possibilities for women's lives by providing contrasting exemplars" (46). These have also been the concerns of critical sociological work. [End Page 118]

Roberts and Kyllonen suggest that biographical sociology involves a critical humanism (3-4). This entails a challenge to social science to undertake a personal-political engagement with the world. According to Ken Plummer, adopting such an approach constitutes "a longing for social science to take more seriously its humanistic foundations and to foster styles of thinking that encourage the creative, interpretive story telling of lives—with all the ethical, political and self-reflexive engagements that this will bring" (1). As John Given notes, "People's intimate stories have transformative power,[sic] the question is how might this power be used?" (64). The critical work done by biographical sociologists in contesting the hegemonic authority of institutional elites, including the institutional authority of orthodox social science, offers something of an answer.

Arnaldo Momogliano suggests that the subjects of biography are the adventurer, the failure and the marginal figure (3-4). Momogliano insists on the distinction between the genres of history and biography. The lives of those whom Hegel referred to as "world-historical individuals," on the other hand, are those with universal histories. Through a symbolic character, one might salvage "a multitude of lives crushed by poverty and oppression" ( Ginzburg 112 ). Such approaches represent an effort to suggest the existence of historical dimensions that are hidden, in part (but not only) owing to the difficulties of documentary access (112). Sociological biography may offer a response to the question, "Can someone, however, who is investigating the history of subordinate social groups expect to reconstruct individuals in the fullest sense of the term?" (115).

Indeed some of the most interesting applications of biographical sociology have involved marginalized, excluded, or exploited people and communities. In his auto/biography of life on the streets, BRE suggests that biography can be an act of resistance for people who are largely erased from history as individuals with their own desires, hopes, and dreams (as opposed to the derogatory terms in which they are constructed by authorities seeking to "clean up the streets") (223-41). Not relying on others to tell their stories, BRE suggests that biography can be an act of self-determination in contexts in which people would otherwise be rendered invisible. As BRE concludes, "Part of this struggle involves recounting our stories, providing glimpses into the many contact zones, streets, struggles and courts, in which our bodies live. Sometimes telling our stories, raising our voices enough to be heard beyond the streets, requires a good old fashioned bread riot" (240-41).

Maggie O'Neill and Ramaswami Harindranath employ biographical sociology as an aspect of Participatory Action Research, research that involves the researcher directly in social and community movements [End Page 119] for social change. Their work, which is centered on the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees in Britain, uses biographical work to contest and oppose the othering stereotypes and myths constructed by authorities in the media and the state regarding migrants as a social threat. O'Neill and Harindranath "develop a case for theory building based upon lived experience using biographical materials, both narrative and visual, as critical theory in practice towards a vision of social justice that challenges the dominant knowledge/power axis embedded in current governance and media policy relating to forced migration" (39). They also sketch an outline of how such work can be broadly transformative across many levels of praxis. This contributes to not only awareness raising and understanding, but towards a holistic sense of social justice:

First level— textually —through: documenting lifestories as testimony to the suffering, exile, and forced displacement they experienced at the hands of soldiers, civic officials, friends (for some family members) and neighbours; and the experience of exile—both internal and external. Second level— visually —through producing art forms to re-present their lifestory narratives, saying the "unsayable," challenging normative media representations and producing auto/biographical visual and poetic texts to re-present their lives and experiences as lived. Third level— practically —together the combination of the visual and textual elements supports and fosters practical (real) processes of intervention and transformation for both the producers/creators and audiences. (47)

O'Neill and Harindranath argue that the nearly complete absence of alternative voices, particularly from the perspective of refugees and asylum seekers themselves, "raises important ethico-political issues relating to the politics of representation, democracy and immigration" (41). They note that much of the knowledge produced by refugees, asylum seekers, community advocacy groups, and organizations promotes better understanding of the issues, providing at least an alternative perspective, but is largely overwhelmed by the often stereotyped knowledge production of mainstream media and policymakers who have successfully framed the issue through the repeated use of othering terms such as "illegal" and "bogus" (40). O'Neill and Harindranath make a case "for the role of biographical research linked to participatory action research (PAR) to develop better 'understanding' of the lived experiences, lived cultures of exile, displacement and belonging" (45). [End Page 120]

Biographical sociology, in these contexts, provides a means by which those whose voices have rarely been heard or listened to might talk back to power. Research methodologies that open or extend spaces for the voices of subaltern actors can do more than raise awareness and challenge stereotypes. They can also contest hegemonic practices and contribute to mobilizations for material, "real-world," change. This means challenging directly economic, political, and cultural elites from below. It is a process of "talking against" established ideas ( Billig 2 ).

Biographical sociology contributes not only to critical theorizing but also to a cultural politics pursuing a vision of social and political justice ( Roberts and Kyllonen 5 ). Indeed, as O'Neill and Harindranath note, the right to speak, to be heard, and to be recognized are fundamental pillars of social justice (44). "Narrative as cultural politics can challenge exclusionary tendencies, promote resistances and transformations by creating spaces for voices and alternative discourses" (44). This has been met by considerable criticism and opposition from the would-be defenders of sociology as social science .

Against Biography, Against the "Ordinary": Gatekeeping Sociology

Some of the sociological silence over auto/biographical practice might be the result of loudly negative responses that have been leveled by gatekeepers of sociological methodology. Perhaps the most vocal opponent in sociology, Herbert J. Gans, asserts that biographical sociology is "the product of a postmodern but asocial theory of knowledge that argues the impossibility of knowing anything beyond the self" (540). Gans also argues that biography abdicates sociology's main "roles in, and for, helping people understand their society" (543). It is precisely this sort of patronizing approach, in which only (or mostly) sociologists understand society and that the (other) people who live in it must be helped, that has spurred some biographical writing in sociology. Rather, biographical sociologists insist that members of marginalized communities have great insights into "their society" and the mechanisms by which marginalization is constituted and reproduced, including through academic elitism. Biography seeks to situate the sociologists as those in need of understanding.

Instead, Gans bemoans the loss of "researcher detachment" and "distancing"—key elements of methodological orthodoxy—and contends that this leads to a loss of reliability, validity, and possibly funding (542-43). He then tries to disparage biography by comparing it to social movements, such as women's, gay and lesbian, and anti-racist movements, as if they are negative aspects of society. Finally, [End Page 121] Gans dismisses biography as being "too ordinary to become part of any sociological canon" (543). To this the biographical sociologist might say, "Hear, hear." What after all is the trouble with ordinary, when one is talking about everyday life? Perhaps one might reflect on BRE's caution about sociologists' claims to scientific detachment: "Notions of objectivity and neutrality don't have much meaning on the streets. Not when you hear how 'objective' observers like social workers and psychologists talk about you or see (and feel) how 'neutral' agents like police respond when a shopkeeper accuses you of causing a disturbance or loitering. The context of 'objective' and neutral practices in a capitalist, racist, patriarchal and heteronormative context is always apparent" (236). While I agree with some of the cautions Gans puts forward, and indeed all methodologies should be approached with caution, overall his presentation of autoethnography is so distorted that it borders on caricature. Whether this rather one-sided reading suggests a specific agenda more than an attempt at understanding is open for debate.

Gans argues that auto/biography is inherently non-sociological, but one gets a decidedly different perspective from Merton's description of "sociological autobiography": "The sociological autobiography utilizes sociological perspectives, ideas, concepts, findings, and analytical procedures to construct and interpret a narrative text that purports to tell one's own history within the larger history of one's times" (18). He goes on to suggest that "autobiographers are the ultimate participants in a dual participant-observer role, having privileged access—in some cases, monopolistic access—to their own inner experience" (43). Auto/biography has its sociological interest "within the epistemological problematics concerning how we understand 'the self' and 'a life,' how we 'describe' ourselves and other people and events, how we justify the knowledge-claims we make in the name of the discipline, in particular through the processes of textual production" ( Stanley, "On" 50 ).

What most biographical sociologists argue is the need for practices that actively and directly situate the researcher within social relations beyond the self, in which the self is engaged and developed and to which the self contributes. Instead of a self/other dichotomy, which many opponents implicitly or explicitly uphold, biographical sociologists recognize the mutual constitution of self and other as relational concepts and seek to understand and express the processes by which they are composed and, significantly, might be re-composed or de-composed. What is presented is a re-evaluation of the dialectics of self and culture ( Spry 706-32 ). Randal Doane suggests that biographical sociology juxtaposes memory and social theory, extending and embodying theoretical conflicts (274-78). [End Page 122]

As well, Stanley asserts that "focusing on 'the sociologist' and [her or his] intellectual practices and labour processes does not mean that we focus on one person and exclude all else" as Gans claims ("On" 45). Rather, these practices and contexts can reveal much about the history of sociology, divisions within society, social networks, and the social production of ideas. Biographical sociology does not imply a shift of sociology towards individualism. As Taylor and Littleton note, "biographical accounts are shaped and constrained by the meanings which prevail within the larger society" (22). This is true whether one is an asylum seeker or refugee, a homeless youth, or even a graduate student or faculty member. This context includes, of course, the meanings constructed and communicated by social scientists and other presumed "experts" whose opinions and perspectives impact the lives of people well beyond their immediate sphere of activity. BRE speaks to the role of biography in disrupting the unequal relationship between researchers and researched: "We are not asked to tell our own stories/we do not get many opportunities to tell our own stories. We are treated as objects rather than subjects. We don't ask which questions to address, we don't design the experiment and we are not invited to present the findings" (225).

Biographical sociologists suggest that sociologists situate themselves materially within a specific labor process and be accountable for the products of their intellectual labor. This also means acknowledging the situational and contextual production of knowledge and the sociologist's position within a social division of labor. The positionality of the sociologist is important for understanding each research activity. The biographer is involved in the active construction of social reality and sociological knowledge rather than discovering it. This can be impacted by the sociologists' own biographical trajectories, at which stage they are in their own professional development. For Merton, good sociological autobiography "is analytically concerned with relating its product to the epistemological conditions of its own production"(qtd. in Stanley, "On" 43 ).

Auto/biography replaces the "power over" of scholarly authority, offering instead a "power with" the researching self and others. An auto/biographical text reflects a space in which "truth and reality are not fixed categories, where self-reflexive critique is sanctioned, and where heresy is viewed as liberatory" ( Spry 721 ). It is situated personally and politically; as Trinh Minh-ha notes, "It interrogates the realities it represents. It invokes the teller's story in the history that is told" (118). Spry offers an account of some of the benefits for research that she identifies with auto/biography: "I am better able to engage the lived experience of myself with others. I am more comfortable in the often conflictual and unfamiliar spaces one inhabits in [End Page 123] ethnographic research. I am more comfortable with myself as other" (721). While Gans argues that auto/biography will cause readers to lose interest in sociological texts (543), for biographical sociologists a "self-reflexive critique upon one's positionality as researcher inspires readers to reflect critically upon their own life experience, their constructions of self, and their interactions with others within socio-historical contexts" (711). In this way auto/biography can make us better sociologists. Instead of taking categories and experiences for granted we are required to look past our own common sense assumptions, to peel back the curtain on such everyday concepts and notions as citizen and scholar.

As O'Neill and Harindranath suggest: "Biographies help us to understand the processes, structures and lived experiences of citizenship and lack of citizenship; and the experiences of humiliation and abandonment (dominant experiences for some asylum speakers/refugees). They highlight the importance of engaging with the subaltern other, creating spaces for voices and narratives to make sense of lived experience, trauma, loss, but also the productive dimension of rewriting the self" (50). These are, or should be, fundamentals of sociological practice. These are the tasks that Mills, using of course a rather different language, outlined in his discussions of the sociological imagination. Biographical sociology holds the promise of a revitalization of the sociological imagination at a time when neo-functionalism and objectivism would seek to restore the authority of the sociologist as expert.

Still, there are other obstacles faced by practitioners of auto/biography in their attempts to develop alternative methodological practices. As Spry notes, biographical sociology can "interrogate the politics that structure the personal, yet it must still struggle within the language that represents dominant politics" (722). In particular, "[s]peaking and embodying the politically transgressive through experimental linguistic forms (i.e., autoethnography, sociopoetics, performance scripts) can result in a lack of publications" (722). Thus, biographical sociologists must often become advocates "for the multivocality of form and content in academic journals," against the academic preference for impersonal and nonemotional modes of representation (723).

In addition, biographical sociologists such as Temple have raised the important, if overlooked, issue of translation and the use in biographical work of a language that is not the same for the speaker(s), researcher(s), and intended audience(s) (9). Drawing upon work in translation studies, Temple examines the difficult and complex issues relating to representation across languages and questions of meaning and interpretation within biographical sociology associated [End Page 124] with translation, especially into English. Of course, an open engagement with biographical sociology encourages these sorts of critical developments, questioning, and innovation. Such is the case in lively, reflexive, and critical work.

The defensive reactions of disciplinary gatekeepers, what some biographical sociologists call a "backlash" ( Rinehart 220 ), has had the effect of silencing larger sociological debate over the emergence and development of new methodological practices ( Sparkes 21-43 ; Spry 722 ). It may also explain why some auto/biographies have been written recently on experiences with the gatekeepers of academic journals when authors have attempted to publish works of biographical sociology. As Andrew C. Sparkes suggests, charges of individualism or subjectivism "function as regulatory charges against certain forms of sociology and act to reinscribe ethnographic orthodoxy" (30).

By placing themselves clearly in the story as agents from specific locations in processes of social and cultural production, auto/biographers have openly challenged accepted views about silent authorship. Indeed the "living body/subjective self of the researcher is recognized as a salient part of the research process, and socio-historical implications of the researcher are reflected upon" (30). In biographical sociology the researcher is firmly in the picture, in context, interacting with others.

Biographical sociology raises important questions of "identity," "belonging," "voice," "knowledge," and "power" and the place of orthodox social science in relation to these issues. Biographical work is "part of the ongoing, interactive process through which identities are taken up" ( Taylor and Littelton 22 ), including the impact upon sociological researchers who engage in such work.

Biographical sociology also opens avenues for sociology as a public practice. As the work of O'Neill and Harindranath (39-53) and BRE (223-41) illustrate, biographical sociology can contribute to a sociological engagement with people and communities that intervenes rather than merely describes or comments upon social policy and political decision-making. According to O'Neill and Harindranath, "Thus a politics of representation informed by a politics of subalternity and Biographical Sociology can provide alternative narratives and praxis (purposeful knowledge) that may feed into public policy and ultimately help to shift the dominant knowledge/power axis embedded in current governance" (50). Other biographical sociologists, such as Given, suggest that biographical sociology might provide a useful perspective or medium in dealing with the data deluge of the [End Page 125] digital age and the phenomena of lives lived within cyberspace, and in dealing with digital storytelling and the use of digital technologies in constructing and recording narratives, including the narratives chosen by sociologists (64). This remains an emergent area of research and much work needs to be done in exploring those possibilities. As such it may allow for reflection upon activities that would otherwise be inaccessible.

I would much rather see an open and honest engagement with auto/biography within sociology. Such an engagement would not shy away from critique but would at the same time address the challenges to sociological practice posed by auto/biography. Rather than reacting against the experimental and the personal in auto/biography, sociologists might do well to see this as a method suited to what Mills once called (unscientifically it seems now) the "sociological imagination." Clearly, we must question how sociologists can live up to Mills' crucial challenge to connect personal issues with public problems if we continue to disavow methodological practices that have no time for the personal experiences, concerns and contexts of the sociologist.

Jeff Shantz teaches courses in critical theory, elite deviance, community advocacy, and human rights at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver, B.C. He has published in such academic journals as Feminist Review, Critical Sociology, Critique of Anthropology, Capital and Class, Feminist Media Studies and Environmental Politics . His book Constructive Anarchy: Building Infrastructures of Resistance (Ashgate 2010) is a groundbreaking analysis of contemporary anarchist movements.

1. See Deleuze and Derrida.

2. See Foucault and Bourdieu.

Works Cited

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Drawing History: Interpretation in the Illustrated Version of the 9/11 Commission Report and Art Spiegelman's In The Shadow of No Towers as Historical Biography

Biographical Desire and the Archives of Living Authors

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Learning Outcomes

Define the sociological imagination
Apply the sociological imagination

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Watch the following video to see an example of how the sociological imagination is used to understand the issue of obesity.

An interactive or media element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can view it online here: http://pb.libretexts.org/its/?p=62

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Mills, C. W.: 1959, The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, London. ↵
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The Sociological Imagination. Provided by : College of the Canyons. Located at : https://www.canyons.edu/Offices/DistanceLearning/OER/Documents/Open%20Textbooks%20At%20COC/Sociology/SOCI%20101/The%20Sociological%20Imagination.pdf . Project : Sociology 101. License : CC BY: Attribution
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Sociology of Personal Life

Research output : Book/Report › Anthology › peer-review

personal life
relationships
materiality
public spaces
consumption

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Sociology Social Sciences 100%
Texts Earth and Planetary Sciences 100%
Edition Social Sciences 66%
Experience Social Sciences 66%
Material Culture Earth and Planetary Sciences 66%
Relationships Computer Science 66%
Social Phenomenon Computer Science 66%
Micro Level Social Sciences 33%

T1 - Sociology of Personal Life

A2 - May, Vanessa

A2 - Nordqvist, Petra

PY - 2019/2/14

Y1 - 2019/2/14

N2 - The second edition of this textbook further establishes the ground-breaking `personal life' approach to sociology. Consolidating the research of multiple experts into one fully revised volume, the text equips readers with the conceptual tools for understanding the micro level of day-to-day life as well as the relationship between personal experiences and wider social phenomena.In this edition, the book extends the range and complexity of what constitutes personal life in sociology, with topics such as the home, political participation, gender, the body and material culture explored in depth. Under the careful editorship of Vanessa May and Petra Nordqvist, both traditional and unexpected topics are explored in a way that emphasises the interconnectedness and relevance of each.Written in an accessible style for readers with no prior knowledge, and incorporating text boxes, figures and discussion questions throughout, this text is an essential for students exploring the relationship between personal experience and wider social phenomena.

AB - The second edition of this textbook further establishes the ground-breaking `personal life' approach to sociology. Consolidating the research of multiple experts into one fully revised volume, the text equips readers with the conceptual tools for understanding the micro level of day-to-day life as well as the relationship between personal experiences and wider social phenomena.In this edition, the book extends the range and complexity of what constitutes personal life in sociology, with topics such as the home, political participation, gender, the body and material culture explored in depth. Under the careful editorship of Vanessa May and Petra Nordqvist, both traditional and unexpected topics are explored in a way that emphasises the interconnectedness and relevance of each.Written in an accessible style for readers with no prior knowledge, and incorporating text boxes, figures and discussion questions throughout, this text is an essential for students exploring the relationship between personal experience and wider social phenomena.

KW - personal life

KW - relationships

KW - kinship

KW - materiality

KW - sexuality

KW - friendship

KW - public spaces

KW - politics

KW - consumption

UR - https://www.waterstones.com/book/sociology-of-personal-life/vanessa-may/petra-nordqvist/9781352005035

M3 - Anthology

SN - 9781352005035

BT - Sociology of Personal Life

PB - Palgrave Macmillan Ltd

ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

The Personal Life Perspective on the Family

The Personal Life Perspective: dogs and dead relatives are part of the family too!

Table of Contents

Last Updated on September 26, 2023 by Karl Thompson

It is increasingly common for people to form close, emotional relationships with their friends, pets and other ‘fictive kin’, and to regard these people (or animals) as part of their family.

People can have close ‘family like’ relationships which provide an emotional and even a financial support network without being in a ‘normal’ family, and if we wish to understand personal life today, we need to focus on the close personal connections which individuals have rather than families in the traditional sense.

The personal life perspective on the family is essentially an Interactionist perspective and criticises structural perspectives such as Functionalism, Marxism and Feminism for assuming the nuclear family is the dominant type of family and taking that as the base unit for analysis.

Rather than studying ‘the nuclear family’ in the traditional sense, we study individuals and take the time to understand their own personal perspective on their own family.

If we do this, we will find multiple definitions and understandings of the family with some people seeing pets, friends, or dead relatives as more important in their personal lives than members of their actual family in the traditional sense of the word.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean people are free to construct whatever family they see fit, they are still constrained by social norms.

Carol Smart is the main thinker associated with this perspective.

A summary of the Personal Life Perspective

mind map summarising the personal life perspective on the family

Criticisms of Structural Perspectives

The Personal Life Perspective makes two main criticisms of structural perspectives on the family such as Functionalism and Marxism

They tend to assume the traditional nuclear family is the dominant type of family . This ignores the increased diversity of families today. Compared with 50 years ago, many more people now live in other families, such as lone-parent families and so on.
They are all structural theories . That is, they assume that families and their members are simply passive puppets manipulated by the structure of society to perform certain functions – for example, to provide the economy with a mobile labour force, or serve the needs of capitalism or of men.

The Sociology of Personal life is strongly influenced by Interactionist ideas and contrasts with structural theories. Sociologists from this perspective believe that in order to understand families, we must start from the point of view of the individuals concerned and the meanings they give to their relationships.’

Personal Life, not necessarily the family!

People can have close, emotional, and meaningful relationships without being embedded in anything like a ‘normal’ idea of a family, thus why we should be looking at personal life from the perspective of individuals rather than focusing on families as the base unit of analysis.

For example, people may have close connections (like we would normally associate with husband-wife, mother-daughter) from all or any of the following:

Dead relatives.
Fictive Kin

Fictive Kin are people who are regarded as family even though they are not related by blood, marriage or adoption.

HINT: It might be useful to remember the Personal Life Perspective as the one about ‘pets and dead relatives’!

Families are complex yet still ‘constrained’

For those people who do form families, the PLP perspective recognises that family structures are complex and that there are several different ways roles within family life may be divided up making for a huge variety in family diversity.

Moreover, different people within the same family may have different views of WHO is in that family. For example, one person might think a dead relative is still part of it, everyone else might disagree; one divorced partner in a stepfamily may regard their family as divorce-extended, the other partner whose first relationship it is might have a different conception.

However, families are still constrained by at least three factors:

Personal family history
Social norms
Structural factors such as class, gender and ethnicity.

These constraints mean that people aren’t just free to make up and defined their families anyway they see fit, there are ‘normative demands’ on them made by objective reality, so this isn’t a purely postmodern take on family life.

Carol Smart: ‘Personal Life: New Directions in Sociological Thinking’

Carol Smart is the main person associated with this perspective. She has become frustrated by the fixation of many commentators with the supposed decline of the possibility of family life. She rejects many of the assumptions about the decline of family life found in theories of individualisation by authors such as Beck and Beck Gernsheim and Giddens.

Instead, her approach prioritises the bonds between people, the importance of memory and cultural heritage, the significance of emotions (both positive and negative), how family secrets work and change over time, and the underestimated importance of things such as shared possessions or homes in the maintenance and memory of relationships.

‘By focusing on people’s meanings, Carol Smart’s personal life perspective draws our attention to a range of other personal or intimate relationships that are important to people, even though they may not be conventionally defined as family. These include all kinds of relationships that individuals see as significant and give them a sense of identity, relatedness and belonging, such as:

Relationships with friends who might be like a sister or a brother to you.
Fictive kin : close friends who are treated as relatives, for example your mum’s best friend who you call your ‘auntie’.
Gay and lesbian ‘chosen families’ made up of a supportive network of close friends, ex partners and others who are not related by marriage or blood.
Relationships with dead relatives who live on in people’s memories and continue to shape their identities and affect their actions.
Even relationships with pets. For example, Becky Tiper (2011) found in her study of children’s views of family relationships, that children frequently saw their pets as ‘part of the family’.

In short – The Family is not in decline, it is just very very different and much more diverse and complex than ever before.

Supporting evidence for the Personal Life Perspective

Fictive kin are often regarded as part of the family.

According to a 2013 survey of 6500 adults in the Netherlands (1) 35% of older persons aged 61-79 were most likely to have fictive kin, as did 23% of middle-aged people, aged 41-60 and 16% of younger people, aged 18-40 had fictive kin

The paper-and-pencil questionnaire included the following question: “Who do you consider to be part of ‘your family’?” Alternatives included: partner, children, parents, siblings, nieces and nephews, grandparents, grandchildren, uncles and aunts, cousins, other relatives, parents-in-law, siblings-in-law, others-in-law, and, finally, “others (a friend, neighbor, etc.).”

The final category was how ‘Fictive Kin’ was operationalized.

This study has some level of reliability as a previous 1992 Study (2) found that 40% of older people identify fictive kin as family.

Pets are often regarded as part of the family

According to a survey of 1000 households and a further 193 in-depth interviews carried out between May 2001 and December 2003 in Swansea, South Wales (3) 46/193 people spontaneously mentioned pets as part of their family .

According to Blue Cross Pet Census 95% of respondents said they view their pets like family, over 70% said they have bought their pet something nice to show them they love them, although I think this may be a case of a biased sample of hardcore pet-lovers when we look at another (2022) survey by the World Animal Foundation 52% of adults in the UK had a pet in 2022, and half of those think they make great companions, which suggests the figure regarding their pets as family is much less than 95%!

This (2023) UK petition to treat pets like children certainly suggests there is support for pets to be treated like part of the family. It is campaigning to get the law changed around how pets are treated during divorce: currently they are treated like property, treating them like children would mean their welfare has to be taken in to account during a relationship breakdown, which currently isn’t the case under British law.

Evidence of Complex family maps…

Eliza Garwood (4) carried out biographical narrative interviews with twenty-two adult children raised by LGBTQ parents.

She documents case studies of how some respondents were born to two apparently heterosexual parents, and spent their early childhoods in that relationship, but then one parent came out and/ or transitioned, broke up with the other parent and established themselves in a queer relationship, with the child being parented by two LGBTQ parents in their later childhood.

She found that many of these (now adult) children have spent considerable time and effort actively construct their kinship-stories as adults, and their sense of family is thus very complex, and often rooted in a sense of injustice about the discrimination than LGBTQ people face.

Evaluation of the Personal Life Perspective

Positive evaluations.

It helps us to understand how people themselves construct and define their relationships as ‘family’ rather than imposing traditional sociological definitions of the family from the outside.
The personal life perspective rejects the top-down view taken by other perspectives, such as functionalism but it does see intimate relationships as performing the important function of providing us with a sense of belonging and relatedness.
It recognises that people are active in constructing relationships. You can use this to criticise the New Right’s view of the nuclear family: the nuclear family may be in decline, but from the PLP it doesn’t matter because there’s all sorts of other relationships that can provide emotional support.

Limitations

Taking the personal life perspective can be accused to taking too broad a view, all we can really do is describe or map out relationships.
Traditional married and cohabiting nuclear families probably provide more financial support to children than friends and more emotional support than pets, so let’s not exaggerate the importance of certain types of personal relationship.
It makes choosing a nationally representative sample of ‘families’ very difficult: there is so much diversity we may not be able to make generalisations from any sample.
A recent (2022) Survey on Declining Friendship USA has found that friendship is in decline in America: people report having fewer friends than in the 1990s, and that they rely on them less for emotional support than was the case 20 years ago. This suggests that friendship might not be replacing the family, rather nothing is!

Signposting and Related posts

Late Modern Perspectives on The Family (what Smart criticises)

Understanding Society – A longitudinal study of changing households in the UK (you can use this data to assess the validity of the Personal Life Perspective)

The Personal Life Perspective is one the main perspectives on the family within the A-Level Sociology Families and Households topic

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3 thoughts on “The Personal Life Perspective on the Family”

yes – it’s explicitly on the spec in 2017

Is this in the AS Sociology spec as of 2017?

Very useful! Thanks

1.1 What Is Sociology?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

Explain concepts central to sociology.
Describe how different sociological perspectives have developed.

What Are Society and Culture?

Sociology is the scientific and systematic study of groups and group interactions, societies and social interactions, from small and personal groups to very large groups. A group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture is what sociologists call a society .

Sociologists study all aspects and levels of society. Sociologists working from the micro-level study small groups and individual interactions, while those using macro-level analysis look at trends among and between large groups and societies. For example, a micro-level study might look at the accepted rules of conversation in various groups such as among teenagers or business professionals. In contrast, a macro-level analysis might research the ways that language use has changed over time or in social media outlets.

The term culture refers to the group’s shared practices, values, and beliefs. Culture encompasses a group’s way of life, from routine, everyday interactions to the most important parts of group members’ lives. It includes everything produced by a society, including all the social rules.

Sociologists often study culture using the sociological imagination , which pioneer sociologist C. Wright Mills described as an awareness of the relationship between a person’s behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person’s choices and perceptions. It’s a way of seeing our own and other people’s behavior in relationship to history and social structure (1959). One illustration of this is a person’s decision to marry. In the United States, this choice is heavily influenced by individual feelings. However, the social acceptability of marriage relative to the person’s circumstances also plays a part.

Remember, though, that culture is a product of the people in a society. Sociologists take care not to treat the concept of “culture” as though it were alive and real. The error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence is known as reification (Sahn, 2013).

Studying Patterns: How Sociologists View Society

All sociologists are interested in the experiences of individuals and how those experiences are shaped by interactions with social groups and society. To a sociologist, the personal decisions an individual makes do not exist in a vacuum. Cultural patterns , social forces and influences put pressure on people to select one choice over another. Sociologists try to identify these general patterns by examining the behavior of large groups of people living in the same society and experiencing the same societal pressures.

Consider the changes in U.S. families. The “typical” family in past decades consisted of married parents living in a home with their unmarried children. Today, the percent of unmarried couples, same-sex couples, single-parent and single-adult households is increasing, as well as is the number of expanded households, in which extended family members such as grandparents, cousins, or adult children live together in the family home. While 15 million mothers still make up the majority of single parents, 3.5 million fathers are also raising their children alone (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). Increasingly, single people and cohabitating couples are choosing to raise children outside of marriage through surrogates or adoption.

Some sociologists study social facts —the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and cultural rules that govern social life—that may contribute to these changes in the family. Do people in the United States view marriage and family differently over the years? Do they view them differently than Peruvians? Do employment and economic conditions play a role in families? Other sociologists are studying the consequences of these new patterns, such as the ways children influence and are influenced by them and/or the changing needs for education, housing, and healthcare.

Sociologists identify and study patterns related to all kinds of contemporary social issues. The “Stop and Frisk” policy, the emergence of new political factions, how Twitter influences everyday communication—these are all examples of topics that sociologists might explore.

Studying Part and Whole: How Sociologists View Social Structures

A key component of the sociological perspective is the idea that the individual and society are inseparable. It is impossible to study one without the other. German sociologist Norbert Elias called the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of individuals and the society that shapes that behavior figuration .

Consider religion. While people experience religion in a distinctly individual manner, religion exists in a larger social context as a social institution . For instance, an individual’s religious practice may be influenced by what government dictates, holidays, teachers, places of worship, rituals, and so on. These influences underscore the important relationship between individual practices of religion and social pressures that influence that religious experience (Elias, 1978). In simpler terms, figuration means that as one analyzes the social institutions in a society, the individuals using that institution in any fashion need to be ‘figured’ in to the analysis.

Sociology in the Real World

Individual-society connections.

When sociologist Nathan Kierns spoke to his friend Ashley (a pseudonym) about the move she and her partner had made from an urban center to a small Midwestern town, he was curious about how the social pressures placed on a lesbian couple differed from one community to the other. Ashley said that in the city they had been accustomed to getting looks and hearing comments when she and her partner walked hand in hand. Otherwise, she felt that they were at least being tolerated. There had been little to no outright discrimination.

Things changed when they moved to the small town for her partner’s job. For the first time, Ashley found herself experiencing direct discrimination because of her sexual orientation. Some of it was particularly hurtful. Landlords would not rent to them. Ashley, who is a highly trained professional, had a great deal of difficulty finding a new job.

When Nathan asked Ashley if she and her partner became discouraged or bitter about this new situation, Ashley said that rather than letting it get to them, they decided to do something about it. Ashley approached groups at a local college and several churches in the area. Together they decided to form the town's first Gay-Straight Alliance.

The alliance has worked successfully to educate their community about same-sex couples. It also worked to raise awareness about the kinds of discrimination that Ashley and her partner experienced in the town and how those could be eliminated. The alliance has become a strong advocacy group, and it is working to attain equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBTQ individuals.

Kierns observed that this is an excellent example of how negative social forces can result in a positive response from individuals to bring about social change (Kierns, 2011).

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COMMENTS

The Sociological Imagination
The sociological imagination is making the connection between personal challenges and larger social issues. Mills identified "troubles" (personal challenges) and "issues" (larger social challenges), also known as biography, and history, respectively. Mills' sociological imagination allows individuals to see the relationships between ...
1.6: History and Biography
1.6: History and Biography. Every person analyzes and evaluates the world from a subjective perspective or viewpoint. Subjective concerns rely on judgments rather than external facts. Personal feelings and opinions from a person's history and biography drive subjective concerns. The time period we live ( history ) and our personal life ...
The Personal is Sociological
The Personal is Sociological. My colleague Teresa Swartz (full disclosure: I'm also married to her) has this writing exercise that she does with all of her Intro students at the end of the semester. In a nutshell, she asks them to write a brief paper situating themselves in the social contexts that have most profoundly shaped and determined ...
The Sociological Imagination
Figure 1. The sociological imagination enables you to look at your life and your own personal issues and relate them to other people, history, or societal structures. Many people believe they understand the world and the events taking place within it, even though they have not actually engaged in a systematic attempt to understanding the social ...
What Is Sociological Imagination: Definition & Examples
Summary. The term sociological imagination describes the type of insight offered by sociology; connecting the problems of individuals to that of broader society. C. Wright Mills, the originator of the term, contended that both sociologists and non-academics can develop a deep understanding of how the events of their own lives (their biography ...
The Intersection of Biography and History
The Intersection of Biography and History. Lisa Wade, PhD on January 24, 2011. We owe the term "sociological imagination" to C. Wright Mills, a fundamental figure in sociology. He defined it as the intersection of history and biography. In his book by the same name, he writes:
Sociological biography and socialisation process: a dispositionalist
Notes on contributor. Bernard Lahire is Professor of sociology at the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon (France) and senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France. He is the editor of the series « Laboratoire des sciences sociales » at the Éditions la Découverte. He has published around 20 books, which include The Plural Actor (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2010).
Sociology Meets Biography: Peter Berger and the Social ...
This article examines the idea of a "sociology of biography." As such, it focuses on the social construction of both biographical continuity and biographical discontinuity. ... Personal identity, in other words, is a product of our memory (Hume 1874 [1739]: 541). It is our memory, in short, that ties our various selves at different points ...
Sociological imagination
Sociological imagination is a term used in the field of sociology to describe a framework for understanding social reality that places personal experiences within a broader social and historical context.. It was coined by American sociologist C. Wright Mills in his 1959 book The Sociological Imagination to describe the type of insight offered by the discipline of sociology.
Sociological Imagination
Essentially, Mills is making the point that sociology connects an individual's circumstances (biography) with the larger institutional context (history). Possessing the capacity to exercise your sociological imagination, to understand how your life is conditioned by social institutions, is empowering. This understanding allows you to take more ...
Project MUSE
Biographical sociology offers a unique approach to understanding individual-society relations. Moving beyond stale structure-agency debates, it allows for a situated analysis of agency-in-structure, of the reflective individual engaging society. It is not, as critics would maintain, simply the study of an individual life.
What is Sociological Imagination?
Developing Sociological Imagination at National University . National University is a regionally accredited institution that offers a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology as well as several programs in criminal justice that enable students to develop and use concepts like sociological imagination for application in the real world. Students learn to apply their ability to enhance human interactions in ...
4.7: The Sociological Imagination
The sociological imagination is making the connection between personal challenges and larger social issues. Mills identified "troubles" (personal challenges) and "issues" (larger social challenges), also known as biography, and history, respectively. Mills' sociological imagination allows individuals to see the relationships between ...
Life's Work: History, Biography, and Ideas
Part personal autobiography, part intellectual history, this article offers lessons from a long career, reflections on my sociological contributions, and an account of how major social changes shaped my trajectory and made me the sociologist I am. I also offer an assessment of some of my central ideas and some new suggestions about how to understand culture.
Emile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim (born April 15, 1858, Épinal, France—died November 15, 1917, Paris) was a French social scientist who developed a vigorous methodology combining empirical research with sociological theory. He is widely regarded as the founder of the French school of sociology.. Childhood and education. Durkheim was born into a Jewish family of very modest means, and it was taken for granted ...
On Auto/Biography in Sociology
2. 2. In The Auto/Biographical I (Stanley 1992) this idea is explored in depth, both theoretically and through discussion of a number of biographical or autobiographical researches of my own. 3. 3. See particularly the introduction to Stanley 1990b, although it appears in other writings from 1983 on. 4.
Sociology of Personal Life
The second edition of this textbook further establishes the ground-breaking `personal life' approach to sociology. Consolidating the research of multiple experts into one fully revised volume, the text equips readers with the conceptual tools for understanding the micro level of day-to-day life as well as the relationship between personal experiences and wider social phenomena.
The Personal Life Perspective on the Family
The Personal Life Perspective makes two main criticisms of structural perspectives on the family such as Functionalism and Marxism. They tend to assume the traditional nuclear family is the dominant type of family. This ignores the increased diversity of families today. Compared with 50 years ago, many more people now live in other families ...
Sociology of Personal Life
This is essential reading for students of sociology interested in family, relationships and beyond. New to this Edition: - Pre-existing chapters have been fully re-written. - Includes a number of new chapters on topics such as the body, home and personal life in public spaces. - Reformulated 'questions for discussion' at the end of each chapter.
Sociology of Personal Life: : Vanessa May: Red Globe Press
The sociology of personal life comes of age in this compelling and highly readable second edition, which develops new and exciting insights into the politics and practices that link the individual and the social in both public and private worlds. Raelene Wilding, La Trobe University, Australia.
1.1 What Is Sociology?
Sociology is the scientific and systematic study of groups and group interactions, societies and social interactions, from small and personal groups to very large groups. A group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture is what sociologists call a society.. Sociologists study all aspects and levels of society.
Max Weber
Max Weber (born April 21, 1864, Erfurt, Prussia [Germany]—died June 14, 1920, Munich, Germany) was a German sociologist and political economist best known for his thesis of the " Protestant ethic," relating Protestantism to capitalism, and for his ideas on bureaucracy.. Early life and family relationships. Weber was the eldest son of Max and Helene Weber.
Discover the Role of Research With WP's Online BA in Sociology
The Role of Research in the Sociology Field. Sociology is the scientific study of society and social behavior, investigating the forces that shape our relationships, communities and institutions. Research is the foundation of this exploration, providing important tools for sociologists to gather data, analyze trends and build a deeper ...

Module 1: Foundations of Sociology

The Sociological Imagination

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What Is Sociological Imagination: Definition & Examples

What is Sociological Imagination?

Sociological Imagination Theory

Mills’ Guidelines for Social Scientists

Mills’ Original Social Problems

1. Threats to Democracy and Freedom

2. Alienation

3. Moral Insensibility

4. Personal Troubles

5. Social and Public Issues

Fast Fashion

The “Global Economic Crisis”

The Intersection of Biography and History

Comments 22

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Alte Technik, von jungen Menschen erklärt | Funktionsstelle — October 22, 2012

T. Sanchez — October 27, 2013

Jackie — June 17, 2014

Obsolete Tech | pollygon — June 23, 2014

charles wright mills biography – QBXS — May 21, 2019

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4.7: The Sociological Imagination

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Sociology of Personal Life

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The Personal Life Perspective on the Family

A summary of the Personal Life Perspective

Criticisms of Structural Perspectives

Personal Life, not necessarily the family!

Families are complex yet still ‘constrained’

Carol Smart: ‘Personal Life: New Directions in Sociological Thinking’

Supporting evidence for the Personal Life Perspective

Pets are often regarded as part of the family

Evidence of Complex family maps…

Evaluation of the Personal Life Perspective

Limitations

Signposting and Related posts

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1.1 What Is Sociology?

What Are Society and Culture?