Sociological knowledge is useful for understanding one's place in society and how social problems affect us in our daily lives. You can also use your sociological imagination to examine ideas and issues, such as race, class, gender, and culture. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Is our society stable or is there constant competition between different groups within our society? Or is it based on everyday human interactions? How one answers these questions is an indicator of a person's perspective on our society. In the first chapter, our textbook introduced the four main sociological perspectives: functionalist, conflictualist, symbolic interactionist, and postmodernist. Each of these four perspectives offers a different view of our society and is an important starting point for examining our society. According to the functionalist perspective, our society is quite stable and organized. Within our society functionalists see our society as being made up of individuals who share a very similar set of standards, principles, and expectations. Within a society there are social structures and foundations, such as family, education, government, and religion. All these factors contribute to ensuring that our society remains stable and functioning. In contrast, the conflict perspective sees our society as a constant struggle for power and competition for limited resources. For example, these conflicts can be about family, finances, or even politics. Karl Marx and C. Wright Mills are two influential conflict theorists. Mills supports the idea that the ruling elite, which is a small group of top corporate, political and military officials, makes most of the decisions within our country. The third sociological perspective is that of the symbolic interactionist. In contrast to the first two perspectives, symbolic interactionists examine societies at the micro level, meaning the view is at the individual level. This perspective is more focused on small groups. However, the other two perspectives examine society at a large-scale level, called the macro level. Our book argues that symbolic interactionists see our society as the interaction of different individuals and groups. Basically these theorists define interaction as communication and symbols include: gestures, signals, values ​​and written language. The last sociological perspective is the postmodern one. These theorists consider other theories ineffective in describing our society. This theory is based on the idea that there is social change, globalization and technology and these are necessary in this era. Sometimes this rapid change within a society can cause chaos and uncertainty. This perspective is often criticized because it always offers answers, but raises more questions. The sociological imagination can be used to examine the world around us in a different perspective. Our book defines sociological imagination as “the ability to see the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society.” C. Wright Mills felt it was important to be able to connect our personal lives to larger issues in society. When I used the sociological imagination to examine race and gender, as a white American male, I may have enjoyed a somewhat privileged life and where in my life I currently have historical ties that connect me to the larger society. This has historical significance dating back to the first English settlers, 2018.