“Sociological imagination”

As Estelle Disch writes in the General Introduction, adopting a “sociological imagination” entails
that we forge connections between our personal, individual problems with broader social
structures. In our previous discussion of privilege, many of us were able to use this kind of
sociological imagination and see some of the possible links between our individual social mobility
and the ways in which that might be facilitated or constrained by various kinds of social privilege.
It’s important for us to keep in mind, however, that while some of us believe that we are not
affected very much by existing social privileges (e.g. white and/or male privilege), we still live our
individual lives in bodies and with identities that are seen as more or less privileged by others in
our society. US culture in particular encourages us to have very individualized perspectives: we
are socialized from a very young age to see our achievements and struggles as the result of
individual will (e.g. the Horatio Alger ideology that everyone can pull themselves up by their
bootstraps equally and attain economic success through self-discipline and hard work). While
individual merit and effort can certainly contribute to greater socioeconomic mobility, existing
systems of inequality in the US nonetheless put more limits on certain individuals over others.
Individuals can of course try to buck or blame the system for their personal circumstances, but
this does not change the history and persistence of oppression and inequality in our society. As
Disch writes, “Although individuals can break or stretch the rules without changing the structures
surrounding human lives, individual change will not have much impact on the structures” (31).
2) "Under and (Inside) Western Eyes" by Chandra Talpade Mohanty
2) "Under and (Inside) Western Eyes" by Chandra Talpade Mohanty
For the most part thus far in our class, we have focused on issues of power and powerlessness in
the US, but as Chandra Talpade Mohanty points out, viewing such issues solely from a Western or
Eurocentric perspective results in multiple blind spots regarding marginalized peoples from other
parts of the world. Mohanty herself has decades of feminist scholarship and activism and has
therefore seen feminism both within and without the academy undergo numerous changes. In the
1980s, the primary shifts in feminist thought were challenges posed to the hegemony of its
Eurocentric perspective by women of color and non-Western areas of the world. Since the 1980s,
therefore, feminist thought in the US has become more sensitive to the different kinds of
struggles faced by women facing different matrices of domination. This was especially
eye-opening for white, liberal, economically privileged US feminists who tended to focus on
attaining the positions of power and influence traditionally concentrated in the hands of men.
Mohanty remains committed to challenging Eurocentrism in her work, but believes that for the
twenty-first century, “the politics and economics of capitalism” are a “far more urgent locus of
struggle” (89). A feminist critique today should not only acknowledge Eurocentrism, but also the
contemporary context of the widespread global proliferation of capitalism, increased privatization,
and the growth of religious, ethnic, and racial hatreds.
The most “inclusive paradigm” for analyzing the effects of what she calls the oppressive effects
of “global capitalism” or “globalization” is to begin by centering feminist analysis on the
struggles and experiences of women and girls from the Third World/South. Throughout her essay,
she gives examples of feminist studies of how the lives of Third World/South women and girls
have been affected by Western corporate interests and transnational governing institutions like
the World Trade Organization. She writes: “It is especially on the bodies and lives of women and
girls from the Third World/South—the Two-Thirds World—that global capitalism writes its script,
and it is by paying attention to and theorizing the experiences of these communities of women
and girls that we demystify capitalism as a system of debilitating sexism and racism and envision
anticapitalist resistance” (94). Only by centralizing the struggles of such marginalized groups of
women and girls can we really come to terms with the oppressive impact of contemporary global
capitalism.
3) "Patriarchy, the System"
3) "Patriarchy, the System"
In Allan G. Johnson’s essay assigned this week, he notes that most of us don’t like to be told that
we are participants in patriarchy. I think this might be true of students too, particularly male
students, some of whom recoil at the suggestion that they are members of a patriarchal society.
As Johnson points out, some people believe that patriarchy extends to the oppressive behavior of
all men—that by virtue of being male in patriarchy, all men are individually at fault for gender
oppression. This kind of belief tends to result in defensive reactions from men who feel that they
are being personally blamed. Not only is this kind of thinking simply wrong, but it also does not
really get at how individuals relate to larger social systems like patriarchy. As he writes: “If we see
patriarchy as nothing more than men’s and women’s individual personalities, motivations, and
behavior, for example, then it probably won’t even occur to us to ask for larger social
contexts—such as institutions like the family, religion, and the economy—and how people’s lives
are shaped in relation to them” (99).
To illustrate this, Johnson gives the powerful example of violence towards women. From an
individualistic perspective, we can ask why a particular man raped or beat a woman, and draw
conclusions about how sick and twisted this behavior is, but what this perspective does not ask is
“what kind of society would promote persistent patterns of such behavior in everyday life, from
wife-beating jokes to the routine inclusion of sexual coercion and violence in mainstream movies”
(99). To really understand persistent social problems like sexual violence, we need to “deal with
the social roots that generate and nurture the social problems that are reflected in the behavior of
individuals” (99).
4) Relationships and roles within systems
4) Relationships and roles within systems
Johnson points out that to understand how individuals and systems interrelate, it’s important to
understand that “[t]he problem isn’t society and it isn’t just us. It’s the relationship between the
two that we have to understand, the nature of the thing we participate in and how we choose to
participate in it and how both are shaped in the process” (104). A useful way of thinking our
individual connections to social systems is by thinking of how we occupy various social positions
that situate us in relation to people in other positions. Thus, to use me as an example, I connect to
families as a daughter of first-generation Chinese immigrant parents, and I am also a wife and a
stepmother—all of which position me differently in relation to people occupying other positions. I
am connected to economic systems through my position as a college professor at a diverse urban
school like UMass Boston; and I connect to political systems as a citizen and registered voter. All
of these positions come with socially expected behaviors and norms which are not entirely within
my control, and it is often in my interest to conform to them so as not to undergo social censure.
Unless we live entirely off the grid, with no association with others and civilization, then we are
necessarily participants in various intersecting social systems.
Johnson also asserts that it is the ongoing actions of individuals that make up systems, otherwise
systems simply cannot exist. But he also takes care to note that the behaviors of individuals
within systems is not always conscious. He writes: “The prominent place of misogyny in
patriarchal culture, for example, doesn’t mean that every man and woman consciously hates all
things female. But it does mean that to the extent that we don’t feel such hatred, it’s in spite of
paths of least resistance contained in our culture. Complete freedom from such feelings and
judgments is all but impossible…So when we hear or express sexist jokes and other forms of
misogyny we may not recognize it, and even if we do, say nothing rather than risk other people
thinking we’re ‘too sensitive’ or, especially in the case of men, ‘not one of the guys.’ In either case,
we are involved, if only by our silence…” (103).