Chapter 4 - Biography and the Sociological Imagination精品分析.docxVIP

Chapter 4 – Biography and the Sociological Imagination Micro Views of the Life Course Shanahan and Macmillan Micro perspective directs our attention to: 1 - p. 182 – agency, which refers to the processes by which people act and react to produce specific desired goals - individuals can shape their future experiences 2 – p. 183 – subjectivity – which refers to the ways in which people make sense of their selves in given social circumstances and the role that this understanding plays in guiding their actions. * agency and subjectivity are linked – both influence and are influenced by the biography and the life course * read bottom of p. 184 about the rise of agency among individuals with modernization “…human beings have been increasingly constructed as agents as societies have evolved from simpler and agrarian to complex and modern. As most cultures have moved away from the belief that gods govern the fates of human beings, the notation of a rational, agentic actor has become increasingly prominent. That is, with modernization, people comet o believe that they are the masters of their fates although, ironically, the institutional basis of the biography. Thus, modern people perceive themselves as agentic, yet their biographies are highly structured, perhaps to a historical unprecedented degree.” Agency Three core elements of agency – p. 187 defines these three Iteration – involves the selective use of the past in current activity Practical evaluation – is the capacity of actors to make judgments about alternative possible actions that arise in the context of specific demands or ambiguities of a given situation Projectivity – is the use of the imagination to generate possible future courses of action. So the past, present and the future all inform our choices Iteration – The Past in the Life Course Looks at how experiences are structured in the past so that actors are enabled in the present Schemata and Scripts Schemata - P. 188 – one central idea is that previo