Читать книгу Asian America - Pawan Dhingra - Страница 15

To attend to the range of issues that Asian Americans inspire, we need to take a heterogeneous research approach. The book privileges the social sciences, in particular sociology, but also draws from other fields. In particular it is informed by the interdisciplinary field of Asian American Studies.

Sociology as a discipline refers to the study of the social causes of why and how humans think and behave. Why do we do what we do? Our biological instincts may guide us. Philosophical arguments about ethics perhaps suggest to us certain options over others as morally appropriate. Monetary constraints can often dictate our choices. But sociologists, more so than other social scientists and humanities scholars, focus primarily on social causes of our actions and attitudes. Social causes refer to how individuals, groups, and social processes – such as one’s family, the labor market, groups, the media, the nation, and so on – impact individuals and are impacted by us. Sociologists place us, everyday individuals, within a social context in order to understand how we interact with our environments, as well as how our environments came to be in the first place.

As we consider the social dimensions to people’s behavior, we build up what noted sociologist C. Wright Mills (1959) called the “sociological imagination.” According to Mills, the “sociological imagination” challenges us to see ourselves not simply as unique individuals with particular life histories. Instead, we should recognize that we are part of social groups and spaces and that we embody certain roles. We experience our families, for instance, through our roles as daughters, siblings, fathers, and so on rather than as individuals. Once we recognize this, we better appreciate the social environment that is outside of us but which influences our lives, and which we act back on.