In sociology, social concepts are used in trying to explain certain events or happenings that are occurring around. From the definition, sociology in the scientific notation is the study of social interaction and organization that tries to define and understand the social action through citing explanations that have been sociologically thought of.
Hence, when analyzing an event, happening or an occurrence using the sociological imagination perspective, as an individual you are exposed to a whole new viewpoint of analyzing things. It encourages a person to look at the social environment in other new ways that are not just the common perceptions, as we look through these new perspectives, we encounter new levels of reality or new explanations to common social phenomena’s that relate to one another.
In sociology, the society is a comprehensive representation of more complex social structures, which people go into through characterized by the social organization. Most sociologists classify the societies in terms of people’s styles of living; a good example is the modern kind of living style and the traditional living style. In a given society, there are interactions involved among those present members of that particular society.
This kind of interaction is termed as socialization; people acquire some kind of behaviors that helps them become part of the society through participating in societal activities. Through socialization, an individual becomes part of the society, a process that is referred as becoming a social being. The act of socialization takes place in various social environments. From social eating areas, entertainment areas, work places and even the house holds.
There are theories that try to explain socialization one such theory is the conflict theory by Karl Marx who bases the theory on the basic principles of economic environments through which a society develops from. Marx’s theory states that the society is composed of two different individuals those individuals who have the wealth and own it, and those individuals who don’t have the means of creating wealth instead are used to produce wealth this creates a class conflict other theories include functionalist theory.
In for example a working environment, there are different people working in the same place. For people to be able to work In harmony to achieve the organization goal these people must have a way by which they understand each other hence communication is essential. Communication is the process by which people convey information, ideas and attitudes from one person to another. A working environment can be used to demonstrate how people are able to communicate together in efforts to attain the business goal.
Given a scenario where an employee is asked to carry out certain work activities (keeping inventory of items and reorder items in short supply) he is able to do the work with no problem as he is conversant with that kind of job, but after sometime this employee is not certain of what exactly is expected of him. He gets to do another job prescribed to him by his boss that involves management and at this point the employee gets confused as to which role he needs to perform for the organization.
His previous work can be described as his prescribed job but the management work, becomes an issue to the employee as he sees a problem arising from taking the job without the specifications of roles. He becomes miserable because there are no clear role expectations from him that would be used by the management for workers assessment. He is concerned about how the rest his colleague’s would think of him, he is also worried about his relationship status at the work place.
From the above scenario it is clear that in a social place, there are boundaries for every individual. Peoples’ relationships are characterized by social ordering that can be defined through the status of a person. These statuses can be either ascribed like the ones assigned to individuals or achieved status that can be got through the basis of a competition.
Status can also be defined through roles. Roles are duties or rights expected to be performed by an individual. In a society, there are times when role conflicts arise especially when individuals’ are faced with conflicting expectations that arise from having two or more statuses. The new position given to the employee mentioned is not clearly stated and for this reason he is in a dilemma. He doesn’t know if he is expected to continue with the same old roles or embrace the new roles or perform both roles.
To him, the previous role maybe what he termed as his line of profession while he views the new job as not inline with his professionalism. This may be the reason as to why the employee is concerned about what his fellow work mates as it is usual in a work place for fellow workers to exactly know what their colleague is good at through socialization programs that are implemented in the organization.
In institutions or organizations there are prime social structures that help in the organization, management and executions of duties. It is hard for an individual to work in an environment that is full of people disrespectful towards you because of one reason or another but if the same person is placed in a place where his fellow workers are respectful then the individual would tell another different story. Sociological imaginations can be used to explain some of the occurrences’ especially those in organizations.