Overview
Sociological Imagination Autobiography
You will write an autobiography to evaluate your personal stories from a sociological perspective. This involves choosing specific events and relating them to society and culture. The purpose of writing a social autobiography is to develop sociological imagination, or the method of viewing yourself within society and culture as a whole. Many individuals experience one or more social problems personally. Choose an aspect or aspects of your life to consider in a broader view. Did you grow up in a traditional or untraditional household? Did you grow up with family problems? Were your parents employed? Were they stay at home parents or worked long hours outside of the house? Analyze how your culture, race, religion, gender,class have impacted events in your education and how that might make you a part of a group that suffers from the same problem. For example, how have immigration issues affected you? Are you a child of Norwegian immigrants living in the Midwest or born of Mexican immigrants in the Southwest? Perhaps you are an undocumented worker, or one or both of your parents are. Place yourself and your experiences within the greater historical perspective. Briefly describe what in your behavior or life you would like to further investigate. Explain how these experiences manifested in your social, emotional, cognitive, and physical experiences that affected your schooling/education. The goal is to individually and collectively identify and analyze how certain school processes and structures might have affected your behavior/ attitudes and expectations. Use hindsight to write about a social or cultural lesson you learned as a result of the experience.