C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills was a prominent sociologist known for his concept of the sociological imagination, which emphasizes the intersection of personal troubles and public issues. He argued that individuals should connect their personal experiences to larger social and historical forces to understand the broader societal implications. Mills' work has had a significant impact on the field of sociology and continues to influence social science research and theory.
7 Key excerpts on "C. Wright Mills"
eBook - ePubMacrosociology
Four Modern Theorists
- Frank W. Elwell(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...114–115). The goal of such research is simply to make bureaucracies more efficient, which therefore not only distracts social scientists from their essential task, but also supports the powerful and the status quo (Mills, 1959/1976, p. 117). Values, according to Mills, necessarily affect social research. They certainly play a role in selecting the problems that social scientists study as well as many “key conceptions.” However, the social scientist should be very clear and explicit about her values and then should strive to avoid bias in her work (Mills, 1959/1976, p. 78). 5 Mills held a similar view in regard to teaching. The professor should strive to be very explicit in terms of the assumptions and judgments that he makes. He should clearly indicate to his students “the full range of moral alternatives,” and then make his own choices known (Mills, 1959/1976, p. 79). THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION In White Collar, Mills took an initial stab at defining the sociological imagination by calling it “the first lesson of modern sociology.” To understand experience, Mills asserted, people must locate that experience within the context of historical time and within social strata (1951/1973, p. xx). Whether people believe it or not, Mills wrote, historical and economic forces move people. Such forces are the stuff of sociology. Ordinary men and women often are oblivious to these forces in their lives, or they may be only dimly aware of their impact (Mills, 1959/1976, p. 3). The sociological imagination is simply a “quality of mind” that allows one “to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society” (Mills, 1959/1976, p. 6). The sociological imagination enables one to switch from one perspective to another, thereby forming a comprehensive view of the sociocultural system (Mills, 1959/1976, p. 211). This quality of mind is characteristic of the best of classical social analysis—it is why much of it is still so useful in understanding social reality...
eBook - ePubTaking Sides in Social Research
Essays on Partisanship and Bias
- Martyn Hammersley(Author)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In a well-known article published in the 1940s, he challenged the way in which ‘social pathologists’ studied social problems, criticising the fact that they took the framework of conventional society for granted, rather than examining its role in generating these problems. And the core theme of his later and even more famous book, The Sociological Imagination, is that it is the task of the social scientist to turn ‘personal troubles’ into ‘public issues’. There, Mills presents social science ‘as a sort of public intelligence apparatus’ concerned with documenting the structural trends that produce social problems (Mills 1959b:181). During his lifetime Mills had considerable influence; certainly, his books sold in greater numbers than those of most sociologists. 2 In the years immediately after his death in 1962, both his example and his ideas shaped the thinking of the American New Left. And he remains a significant reference point in Anglo-American sociology today. 3 In this chapter I want to outline the model of the sociologist's role that Mills provides, against the background of some of the major influences upon him, and to assess the cogency of the case for that model. Mills on the role of the sociological imagination In The Sociological Imagination Mills argues that there is an acute need for social scientific ways of thinking in contemporary society. He puts forward several reasons for this: the increasing rapidity of social change; the move towards larger and larger forms of economic and political organisation; and the associated growth in the extent to which changes in one part of the world affect people living elsewhere. He argues that sociology is necessary for an understanding of the prevailing social forces, and that such understanding is essential if people are to be able to regain control over their own lives...
eBook - ePubSport, Exercise and Social Theory
An Introduction
- Gyozo Molnar, John Kelly(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Conversely, the early realisation of such competition would allow you to make necessary provisions so that you stand out. You would have time and opportunity to ensure that you have gained additional skills and experiences that would potentially give you the cutting edge. As Mills (1959/2000: 5) wrote: ‘The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals’. As we said, the concept of SI is concerned with understanding your position and role(s) in society. Whatever degree of knowledge and understanding you have of your options, limitations, and roles in your immediate and more distant social milieux, by actively employing the concept of SI, your level of social and self-awareness can be REFLECTION Now relate what Mills states back to the example we outlined earlier by asking the following questions: What is the larger social/ historical scene regarding higher education? What is the relevance of that in relation to you? In what ways have social structures (social/historical scene) had a bearing on your life choices? What can you do to maximise your potential given the current social scene? significantly increased. ‘The first fruit of this imagination… is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauges his own fate’(Mills, 1959/2000: 5). The enhancement of self-awareness can be achieved by exploring a few fundamental sociological concepts and by adopting related self-reflective, self-investigative practices. This sociological self-discovery can be effectively used exploring the connections between personal troubles and social issues. TROUBLES VERSUS ISSUES Mills was genuinely concerned with people's lack of ability to distinguish and identify personal troubles and social issues and to recognise the historical and structural forces that have an effect upon their lives...
eBook - ePubCrime, Violence and Modernity
Connecting Classical and Contemporary Practice in Sociological Criminology
- Gordon Hughes(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...At this point it is helpful to recall and reprise Charles Wright Mills’ ambitious and deeply comparative disciplinary programme underpinning the ‘sociological imagination’ and its three classical, foundational questions linked to the concepts of ‘social organisation’, ‘social change’ and ‘social identity’. Mills (1959/2000: 6–7) asks us: What is the structure of this particular society as a whole? What are its essential components and how are they related to each other? How does it differ from other varieties of social order?…. Where does this society stand in human history? What are the mechanics by which it is changing? What is its place within and its meaning for the development of humanity as a whole?…. What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this period? And what varieties are coming to prevail? In what ways are they selected and formed, liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted? What kinds of ‘human nature’ are revealed in the conduct and character we observe in this society in this period? Apart from its virtues of conceptual clarity and ambitious comparative scale, Mills’ programme helps us avoid the intellectual dangers of what may be inelegantly termed ‘presentism’ and the cult of ‘relevance’ in much sociological and criminological practice towards current political and policy debates. The proper study of sociological criminology is thus made clearer: in Alvin Gouldner’s (1973 : x) terms, it is the critical understanding of both ‘the larger society and of the broadest social theory’ rather than simply the ‘study of some marginal, exotic or esoteric group, be they criminals or criminologists’. Secondly, following on from Mills’ foundational programme of sociology’s ‘task’ and ‘promise’, it is argued that the iterative relationship between theory-method-evidence in social scientific research must be placed at the centre of any discussion of what it means to practice sociology and criminology...
eBook - ePubReading Media Theory
Thinkers, Approaches and Contexts
- Brett Mills, David M. Barlow(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...A leading critic of American society, Mills produced the majority of his major works during the 1950s. In addition to The Power Elite (1956), these included White Collar: The American middle classes (1951), The Sociological Imagination (1959) and Sociology and Pragmatism: The higher learning in America (1967). Described as a ‘public intellectual’, Mills aimed his writing at a ‘general and educated audience’ (Docherty et al. 1993, cited in Williams 2003 : 15). Mills believed that the object of research and publication was ‘the growth of reason and the emancipation of humanity’, and that this required a critical and empirical sociological approach informed by biography and history (Peters 2003 : 220). In this respect, Mills was sharply critical of approaches to research that relied on highly abstract theorising (‘grand theory’), and methods that were solely dependent on quantitative research techniques (‘abstracted empiricism’) (see, for example, Marshall 1998). His insistence that research should focus on the relationship between the social, personal and political dimensions of people's lives was illustrated in the The Sociological Imagination (1959), where he outlined a view of the world that illuminated connections between private problems and public issues. The same depth and breadth of thinking and analysis are evident when he turns his attention to the mass media in the reading that follows. Mills sees the mass media as integral to his analysis of mass society. Thus, he takes account of the wider social, political and economic structures in America. You will quickly realise that the author ascribes great power to the media and their owners, but makes not one mention of ‘media effects’ (see @ Chapter 14)...
eBook - ePubPostmodern Cowboy
C. Wright Mills and a New 21st-century Sociology
- Keith Kerr(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...C HAPTER 2 C. Wright Mills: An American Utopian Horowitz’s Incomplete Biography Undoubtedly, C. Wright Mills is one of the best-known American sociologists of the twentieth century. From his exploration into what he saw as a power elite at the helm of American decision-making to his methodological statements in The Sociological Imagination ([1959]1967), Mills’s intellectual impact is still felt within the discipline. The fact that he died at the early age of forty-five makes this all the more impressive. Perhaps just as important to his continuing legacy, however, is the persistent image of a larger-than-life embodiment: the rebel from Texas who, with a zeal and passion conspicuously missing in the archaic and dry academic arena, set out to remake the discipline through an all-out attack on power elites, be they in the public or within sociology’s own ranks. Bernard Phillips, a former undergraduate in Mills’s Introduction to Sociology course at Columbia University, tells a story highlighting Mills’s propensity for challenging authority. His story revolves around an encounter between Mills and the then Columbia University president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, soon to be the president of the United States. While Eisenhower and Mills shared similar concerns, Eisenhower warning the American public of the dangers posed by the “Military-Industrial Complex” and Mills expressing very similar concerns regarding the growing power elite, Eisenhower during his time at Columbia was far from trusted by those on the Left such as Mills. During the Red Scare sweeping the United States, Eisenhower served on a commission that concluded communists should be barred from teaching in the classroom, and he also supported the dismissal of a Left-leaning member of the Teachers College at Columbia (Columbia University 2007). Perhaps this is part of the motivation behind Mills’s actions toward Eisenhower...
eBook - ePubSport and Peace-Building in Divided Societies
Playing with Enemies
- John Sugden, Alan Tomlinson(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This piece also, novelly, alerted the sociological constituency to the relevance of political and cultural commentary (by the likes of George Orwell and C.L.R. James) for the sociological project, and gave examples of the social scientific insights generated by new journalistic writers combining mediated ethnographies (or bouts of participant observation) with literary techniques of reportage. Rick Gruneau had also for some time highlighted the importance of Wright Mills’s work for an emerging sociology of sport, stressing the centrality of his public issues/personal troubles, and history/biography couplets for any adequate alternative sociological model to the current North American orthodoxy: this latter Gruneau called a “mechanistic application of the natural scientific model of inquiry to sporting situations”; and his call to sociological arms concluded with the observation that any understanding preceding action “lies in the reflexivity and critical ‘consciousness’ of the sociological perspective”. 19 In his bold and brilliant combination of sociological and cultural theory and analysis, Class, Sports and Social Development, published in 1983, Gruneau again praised and paraphrased Mills’s core connection between personal troubles and public issues. 20 In the period from the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, in our different ways but in the context of increasingly reciprocally informed and enjoined academic and intellectual work, Alan and I were converging to contribute to a post-functionalist blend of critical theory and qualitative methodology, anchored too in a sense of history and Wright Mills’s core concerns: first, with the relationship between “personal troubles” and “public issues”; second, with the connection between history and biography...
