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=> Re: another great work by him: The Sociological Imagination

Re: another great work by him: The Sociological Imagination
Posted by Maggie (Guest) - Wednesday, November 8 2006, 21:01:11 (CET)
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Twenty years ago, when I was a Sociology major, you couldn't graduate college without writing your own biography using C. Wright Mills' the Sociological Imagination, to explain how your own life intersected world events that shaped your life and the world, and to explain how was it "In many ways a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one".

It was a difficult assignment but I am so glad that my school made it mandatory in those days of all Sociology majors, because I was forced to write my life story from the day I was born, what I witnessed in Iraq and in the United States as an immigrant, and how this experience shaped my life. It forces you to think about who you really are, your role in the society in which you live, and how you will live the future.

It turned out that by moving from Baghdad to Chicago as a young girl, put my life in an irreversable direction, where my life crossed the biggest intersection of world events. Since the day we arrived in Chicago, my parents would take us to downtown every Sunday after church. We would visit Field Museum, Museum of Science and industry, the Oriental Institute, Museum of Modern Art, and just about every major art or cultural center you can name.

In 1968, I was in downtown Chicago with my parents on a usual Sunday afternoon, exploring the city, when all hell broke loose. We were near the Blackstone Theater, where the Democratic Convention was taking place, and the next thing we know demonstrators started getting louder, and louder, and a near riot broke out. I witnessed first-hand, the Chicago police busting skulls of the anti-war demonstrators. We were freightened because we didn't want to be caught in the middle of a blood-bath, but it was that moment that changed my life forever.

I had never before seen young men and women so strong in their convictions and beliefs that they would risk their lives to stop an immoral war. These young people actually stood for something! This was the beginning of that "terrible lesson, yet a magnificent one".

Not only did this experience influence me to become a political activist when I grew-up, but from that moment on, I found myself in places where world-changing events took place, any where I travelled or lived, as if I was to bear witness to them and reveal them to the world..

The Sociological Imagination is indeed transformational. I recommend it to everyone.



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