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An introduction to sociology views the discipline as an interaction of the personal & structural whereby individuals learn to make sense of their lives & the lives of others. It is suggested that people internalize a vast amount of sociological information, which is transparent to them, thus difficult to discuss. The sociological imagination is described as the ability to see the social in aspects of life usually construed as personal or random. Much of this social life is taken up in daily practical kinds of sociologies, eg, getting & accepting dates, which form practical bodies of knowledge that allow individuals to make sense of their daily activities. Ways of imagining the interaction of the individual & the social that begin with the social are traced from Emile Durkheim to Pierre Bourdieu, & the history of sociology from its 1880s origins to the present is reviewed, suggesting that sociology has rediscovered the moral passions that animated it at its inception & thus has recaptured its sense of vocation as a practical activity. The great question of sociology -- the relation between social structures & individual agents -- is addressed. How sociologists measure the differences in individual outcomes produced by the structural-individual interaction is reviewed. It is argued that grasping the sociological imagination means having the courage to bring new social things into being, & thus changing the circumstances in which individuals live for the better. An Introduction precedes 11 Chpts, organized in III PARTS. Notes. D. M. Smith