Question

how do you think sociology will help people in their day to day life

Answer 1

Today we live in a world that is intensely worrying, yet full of the most extraordinary promise for the future. It is a world marked by rapid changes, deep conflicts, tensions and social divisions, as well as by increasing concerns about the destructive impact of human societies on the natural environment. Yet we also have new opportunities for controlling our destiny and shaping our lives for the better that would have been unimaginable to earlier generations.This really is the best time to study sociology.

Some people make the wrong perception that sociology is merely “a painful elaboration of the obvious”.This is probably because sociologists often study things that we have some personal experience of. Sociology, by using method of inquiry that requires the systematic testing of beliefs against evidence, can either sharpen our understanding of the obvious, or it completely transforms our common sense. In either event, good sociology is neither tedious nor a restatement of the obvious.


Studying sociology will not only enable you to understand society, but will also let you see things you would never have considered before. This is thanks to the American sociologist C. Wright Mills who said; when studying sociology, we should always be using our “sociological imagination”.[4] This means breaking away from our personal circumstances and other pre-existing ideas. Above all, we need to ‘think ourselves away’ from the familiar routines of our daily lives in order to look at them anew.

An example of this is the simple act of drinking a cup of coffee. Drinking coffee has a symbolic value. For example, the ritual associated with coffee drinking is more important than the simple act of consuming it. Coffee also contains caffeine – a drug that helps provide ‘extra lift’. However, coffee-drinkers are not normally regarded by most people in Western cultures as ‘drug-users’. Like alcohol, coffee is socially acceptable drug, whereas marijuana, for instance, is not. Drinking coffee is just one example, but by using your sociological imagination, you can see anything (yourself, your school, your family etc) from a different perspective.

Adopting a sociological imagination allows us to see that many events, which appear to concern only the individual, actually reflect larger issues. One of the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology even made a very personal issue (suicide) into something that is ultimately caused by society. A more mundane example would be divorce. It may be a very difficult process for the person going through it, but divorce is also a significant ‘public issue’ in many societies across the world. Sociologists therefore are very interested in it; from the causes of divorce – to the increase of divorce rate – to the effect it has on certain groups and to wider society.


Sociology can even help you to become a better person – I know it has for me. By having a better understanding of the world, you learn why the world acts the way it does. Not only this, but it also helps your understanding in day-to-day life. For example, why people stare at the numbers in an elevator and are reluctant to make eye contact in this setting. It helps you to stand back, be logical and rational before you simply react.   Sociology is also a discipline that has helped me to become a more tolerant, acceptant, and culturally and ethnically sensitive individual. I no longer have the same ethnocentric attitude I used to have, and although I may not agree with people’s actions or views, I have a clearer understanding as to why different groups of people (ethnic, social, economic, age, gender etc) act in a certain way, or believe in a certain idea.

And this is all from three years of studying sociology
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