ANALYSIS OF "THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE" (part 2)

Sociological Mindfulness
by
Charles Lamson

Do you recognize the typefaces used in this blog? In what style is it written? On what kind of program is it created? If such questions seem strange, it is because you have not learned to practice a certain kind of mindfulness with regard to blogs. It is the same with many things around us, familiar things that affect us deeply. We fail to see what they are, because we lack the necessary kind of mindfulness. Fortunately, we can learn.

Mindfulness is more than paying attention. To be mindful of a thing is to see and appreciate its unique qualities. For example, to be mindful of a person is not just to be aware of and pay attention to that person. To be mindful of a person as a human being, means trying to see and appreciate his or her uniqueness as a thinking and feeling being. When we are mindful of a person in this way, we see past stereotypes and prejudices.

Children often see things with amazing clarity, because their minds are fresh and the world is new and wondrous to them. However, a child's mindfulness is indiscriminate, as if one kind of group can get a hold of everything. As adults, we learn to be mindful in ways that suit the things we encounter. We learn that people, for example, must be understood in terms of what makes them people: ideas, feelings, desires, bodies, and habits. Likewise, blogs must be appreciated for what makes them blogs: text, design, programming, and so on. For each kind of thing, we learn a different way of grasping it.

Sociological mindfulness is the practice of tuning in to how the social world works. We are all tuned in, to some extent, of course, just by being members of society. But to be truly mindful of the social world, we must learn to see it for what it is. We must learn, in other words, the ideas necessary to see what makes the social world a unique phenomenon. These are ideas about how to pay attention to the social world. Sociological mindfulness is the practice of paying attention in these ways.

What do we see if we practice sociological mindfulness? We see, for example, how the social world is created by people; how infants become functional human beings; how we are interdependent with others; how people's behavior is a response to the conditions under which they live; how social life consists of patterns within patterns; how contingencies shape our fates; how appearances are strategically crafted; how power is exercised; how inequalities are created and maintained; and how we can create valid and reliable knowledge about the social world.

To be continued...

*SOURCE: THE SOCIOLOGICALLY EXAMINED LIFE, 2ND ED., MICHAEL SCHWALBE, 2001, PGS. 3-4*

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