What is sociology to you?

The simple answer is the study of societies, in terms of all their key dimensions: historical, social, economic, cultural and political. For more depth and detail, rather inevitably, I would draw on C Wright Mills (1959), to highlight four key aspects of the discipline. First, with C Wright Mills, the ‘sociological imagination’ is marked by the capacity ‘to translate personal troubles into public issues’ – in other words, you become more able to understand individual experiences and events with respect to deeper social processes and structures. Second, the sociological imagination is not the exclusive terrain of trained sociologists, but evident in much everyday critical reflection and comment by individuals and social groups. Third, the sociological imagination should also harbour a critical standpoint on power relations, and a political and emancipatory focus, underpinned by a commitment to social justice. Fourth, I would add a further point on the sociological imagination: the sociologist needs to bring creativity, innovation and imagination to bear on how the issue at hand or research problem is to be identified, studied and explained.

In recent decades, as a subject, sociology has become increasingly complex and diverse in three main ways: first, in its interdisciplinary qualities, as boundaries become more blurred and impractical with other disciplines and sub-disciplines, such as anthropology, criminology, cultural studies, economics, education, geography, law, philosophy, political science, psychology and social policy; second, in the dazzling plurality of theories, methods and substantive fields of inquiry that are spread across the sociological spectrum; and third, as globalisation processes have intensified, so sociology has become an increasingly transnational discipline that is focused on increasingly ‘glocal’ social phenomena.

Why study sociology?

To give a sociological answer, this is perhaps driven by a mix of socialisation, contextual influences, resource allocation and (minor) risk-taking. In my own case, I had a long-standing curiosity and interest in many of the themes and issues addressed by the discipline, notably regarding social inequalities, social justice and cultural movements. Growing up, I had the benefit of being socialised around plenty of family and friends (notably around different youth subcultures) who adopted a healthy scepticism and criticism towards all sorts of social issues.