Sociology begins with individuals' experiences in order to explore the collective themes and patterns of human behaviour that shape our society and the distribution of health within it (Willis, 1993). This essay will describe the "sociological imagination" and then apply the concepts of the sociological enterprise to Aboriginal health and illness. The discussion will include how a sociological perspective contributes to understanding social exclusion and its affects on aboriginal mental illness .
The "sociological imagination" asserts that people do not exist in isolation but within a larger social network (Willis, 1993). Sociology begins with individuals' experiences in order to explore collective themes and patterns of behaviour that shape our society (Willis, 1993) and the distribution of health within it. This facilitates a connection to be made between "private troubles" and "public issues" (Mills 1959 cited in Germov, 2002) and further enables health problems to be viewed as social issues (Germov, 2002).
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