The Sociological Imagination

There’s a reason why this is in every intro to sociology course it is phenomenal informative and sometimes entertaining can’t recommend enough

Probably one of the most influential books in modern sociology, combining not only a wonderful characterisation of styles of sociology but also a commitment to interpreting the world and changing it. His appendix "On Intellectual Craftmanship" is a chapter I have ALL my graduate students read every year, and would wish all social scientists did so!

A classic of sociological thought, and one of the best (if not the best) accounts on the purpose and tasks of sociological mindset. Sociological imagination (or perspective, if you will) as intersection of biography and history - pure and simple, yet succinctly incisive and elegantly descriptive. Still a very relevant, influential and timely text for each and all.

TThis is a masterful work by an original thinker. Wright was concerned with the developments that he was seeing in the social sciences in his time. He was concerned that the social sciences was developing in ways that limited its value to humanity and therefore to itself. He saw the social science of his day as working against true freedom in society by allowing itself to be used to manipulate the population into unthinking acceptance of established authority.He saw two major trends that removed the social sciences from addressing robust problems whose solution would make genuine differences to humanity. The first was a retreat into 'Theory' so abstract that it was unable to describe anything of significance. Wright uses as an example an article that describes a theory of human relationships that was so abstracted from reality that, as Wright shows, it could not capture the fact that sometimes people accept the norms of their society unwillingly. This theory was wrapped in such opaque jargon to unambiguously define the trivial that it last all relationship to genuine society.Wright also identifies as a further development in the social sciences, an empiricism so constrained by technique that it can only address the most specific and mundane problem. If theory has become to remote and abstract to contact real society this empiricism is equivalent in being so immersed in the specifics of a society that it cannot capture more than the trivial.Wright's book is a plea to social scientists to abandon these two enterprises and to return to a social science which is concerned with problems whose solutions will change society,. He calls the ability to find and understand such problems the sociological imagination. He sees practitioners of this form of sociology as inherently political. They may not be in political office but they make their findings known to be acted upon in the political milieu. Wright sees this as a way to genuine freedom in that the governed will know the structure of the society that is governing them and can then freely choose to live within it or to make changes. Wright is concerned that the social sciences of his time were not used to promote this genuine understanding of society by the population but to manipulate them into a passive acceptance of norms that may not be in their interest. He is afraid of a beneficent tyranny with a population of what he calls happy robots.This book is a denunciation of passive acquiescence and a plea for informed acceptance as the basis of society. Wright's fears are as valid today as when he wrote them over 40 years ago.

I first came across this book when I was an undergraduate doing a course on introduction to sociology. It was on the required reading list. I had to confess, when I first encountered it, I did not know what to make of the book nor what the fuss was all about.Now, many years later, I have just finished re-reading the book and am now convinced why this is a classic in the literature of the Social Sciences. Mills in this book seeks to advocate a certain ideal in the discipline of sociology. Known as the sociological imagination, he advocates the idea of using sociology to bear on the unease which man(in a generic sense!) faces in his daily life. Mills is arguing that much of unease felt by the individual has social roots, i.e., it is shared by many others. The cause of such unease has to do with the structure of society and changes that is happening in it. Hence, there is a great need for sociologists (and other social scientists) to articulate how such unease has sociological causes and thus enabling the individual to understand how his biography intersects with the structure and history of his society. In this way, hopefully it will empower to individuals to transform such unease into public issues in order to bring about changes in society. Overall, this work is intelligently written as well as being morally challenging.Sure, much has changed since the first publication of this book but it is a good place to start for those who wants to find out what is sociology and to those who wants to be reacquainted with the ideals of sociology. It is a morally challenging work which needs to be read and re-read time and again!

No one has written with more verve and authority about the awesome and frightening capabilities of man than the late C. Wright Mills, a prominent and controversial sociologist who wrote such memorable tomes as "White Collar", an exploration of the emerging American Middle class in the early 1950s, and The Power Elite", a provocative examination of the nature of power, privilege, and status in the United States, and how each of these three critical elements of power and property in this country are irrevocably connected to each other. At last look, both books were still in print and are still used in both undergraduate and graduate sociology courses throughout the world. After fifty years, that in and of itself is powerful testimony to his enduring value as a scholar and an original thinker.Here Mills focuses memorably on the qualities and uses of the sociological perspective in modern life, how such a scientifically based way of looking at, interpreting, and interacting with the larger world invests its user with a better, more accurate, and quite instrumental picture of what is happening meaningfully around him. For Mills, the key to understanding the value in such a perspective is in appreciating that one can only understand the motives, behavior, and actions of others by locating them within a wider and more meaningful context that connects their personal biographies with the large social circumstances that surround, direct, and propel them at any given historical moment. For Mills, for example, trying to understand the reasoning behind the sometimes desperate actions of Jews in Nazi Germany without appreciating the horrifyingly unique existential circumstances they found themselves in is hopelessly anachronistic and limited.On the other hand, one invested with such an appreciation for how biography and history interact to create the meaningful social circumstances of any situation finds himself better able to understand the fact that when in a country of one hundred million employed, one man's singular lack of employment might be due to his persoanl deficiencies or lack of a work ethic, and be laid at his feet as a personal trouble, it is also true that when twenty million individuals out of that one hundred million figure suddenly find themselves so disposed and unemployed, that situation is due to something beyond the control of those many individuals and is best described in socioeconomic terms as a social problem to be laid at the feet of the government and industry to resolve. To Mills, it is critical to understand the inherant differences between personal troubles on the one hand, which an individual has the responsibity to resolve and overcome, and social ills, which are beyond both his ken or control. Indeed, according to Mills, increasingly in the 20th century one finds himself trapped by social circumstance into dilemmas he is absolutely unable to resolve without significant help from the wider