 sociologist Sam Richards sets an extraordinary challenge Tags: nationalism, political economy, violence, war/military, c. w. mills, empathy, ethnocentrism, military sociology, sociological imagination, sociology of war, terrorism, 11 to 20 mins
Year: 2011 Length: 18:07 Access: TED Talks Summary: By leading Americans in his audience step by step through a thought experiment, sociologist Sam Richards sets an extraordinary challenge: can Americans understand—not necessarily condone, but understand—the motivations of an Iraqi insurgent? I would argue that Richards' thought experiment is an attempt to give his audience a taste of what C. W. Mills called the sociological imagination, which can be defined as a perspective that allows one to locate the structural transformations that lie behind one's personal troubles. By proposing an alternate history for the United States, one where a colonial China extracts coal from the US in order to power Chinese cities, Richards asks his audience to consider a political economy that would trap the vast majority of Americans in desperate poverty. Just as Americans can imagine the intense frustration they would feel if forced to suffer under such an unbalanced economic arrangement, perhaps they can similarly imagine the intense frustration many Iraqis currently feel. Richards' thought experiment asks Americans to locate those Iraqis who have been demonized by the West as simply evildoers or terrorists in a broader social context, and to use a sociological imagination in order to grasp the motivations and frustrations of those who take up arms against the US. John Dower has argued that the war in the Pacific was a war without mercy in part because the Japanese became so dehumanized and alien, so unworthy of empathy, that the usual rules of conduct in war were set aside. If this is true, then a sociological imagination, as a means of fostering empathy, has important implications for conduct in war. Submitted By: Anonymous
6 Comments
Molly
9/11/2013 08:22:12 am
This TED talk walks the audience through an intellectual experiment in radical empathy, in other words, how to think like a sociologist. I used this clip in the first week of an intro course as an example of what it means to use a sociological imagination. I was blown away by the students' responses. Many became very emotional during the video, and almost all said that they had never thought about how it would feel to have their own country invaded and exploited, or how they might react if that happened. It's always been a challenge to get students to grasp the concept of the sociological imagination, but after watching this video, they immediately began using terms like "thinking beyond my own experience" and "connecting individual actions to bigger social forces."
Bob
1/16/2014 10:53:41 am
Hi Molly, I have taken to using it for my first Intro to Sociology class each semester as well. It has been a great class starter.
Marlaina
7/15/2014 10:36:22 pm
I love this video! I also use it on my first intro lecture as part of my students' "sociological toolkit" (which includes empathy, the beginner's mind, sociological imagination, etc). It's a great place for students to start if they have never been asked to acknowledge their own social location before.
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