The Sociological Imagination and Social Responsibility

In this paper, we maintain that sociologists should deliberately teach social responsibility as a means of fulfilling the promise that C. Wright Mills envisioned. A key aspect of the sociological imagination includes a sense of social responsibility, but that aspect is best learned through a combination of experience and academic knowledge. Students gain the fullest sense of the sociological imagination, one that includes social responsibility, when they are able to have encounters and experiences that challenge their pre-existing world-views and allow them to see first-hand the sociological concepts they learn in the classroom. Further, we argue that teaching social responsibility is appropriate because it has deep roots in the discipline. We identify the origins of the active learning model in sociological theory and provide examples of the ways in which social responsibility is realized through service learning experiences of our students.