sociology discussion homework 2

 
READ: The Promise from the Sociological Imagination by CW Mills

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“The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.  That is its task and its promise.”

That’s an ambitious agenda but, even as a beginner, you can begin to realize that promise by asking three sorts of questions: those referring to structure, history and biography. When asking these three basic questions, you need to differentiate between the two basic elements of society (biography and history).  Differentiate between the “personal troubles of the milieu” and the “public issues of structure.”

• Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others.
• Issues have to do with matters that transcend the local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life.

Answer the following questions based on the contemporary world (large or small, local or global) that YOU live in.  You may focus on one aspect of a particular society (small-scale) or the entire society as whole.  Please be sure to indicate how you’re defining society and/or if you’re focusing on one narrow subsection of a type of society:

1. STRUCTURE: What is this structure of this particular society as a whole? What are the essential component parts? How do these parts relate to one another? How does this society differ from others?

2. HISTORY: Where does this society stand in human history?  What are the essential features of this historical period?  How did/does social change happen? What macro (large-scale, structural) trends cause social problems?

3. BIOGRAPHY: What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this period? How is human behavior changing? In what ways are social characteristics shaped? Which characteristics are encouraged and which are repressed?  How is human “nature” shaped by society’s dominant institutions?

4. Write a ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY on the main point of the reading. In other words, what IS the “sociological Imagination” or sociological perspective he is outlining in the article?

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The Promise
C.Wright Mills

C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) was a former professor of Sociology at Columbia University. During his brief
academic career, Mills became one of the best known and most controversial sociologists. He was critical
of the U.S government and other social institutions where power was unfairly concentrated. He also
believed that academics should be socially responsible and speak out against social injustice. The
following excerpt is from Mills’ acclaimed book, The Sociological Imagination. Since its original
publication in 1959, this text has been a required reading for most introductory sociology students around
the world. The perspective offered by the “sociological imagination” not only compels the best
sociological analyses but also enables the sociologist and the individual to distinguish between “personal
troubles” and “public issues.” By separating these phenomena, we can better comprehend the sources of
and solutions to social problems.

This article was written in 1959 before scholars were sensitive to gender inclusivity in language. The references to
masculine pronouns and men are, therefore, generic to both males and females and should be read as such. Please note
that I have left the author’s original language in this selection.—Editor
From The Sociological Imagination, pp.3-13. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.

Nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that
within their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are
often quite correct: What ordinary men are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded
by the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to close-up
scenes of job, family, neighborhood; in other milieu1 , they move vicariously and remain
spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats which
transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel.

Underlying this sense of being trapped are seemingly interpersonal changes in the very
structure of continent-wide societies. The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the
success and failure of individual men and women. When a society is industrializes, a peasant
becomes a worker; a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman. When classes rise or
fall, a man is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a man
takes new heart or goes broke. When wars happen, an insurance salesman becomes a rocket
launcher; a store clerk, a radar man; a wife lives alone; a child grows up without a father. Neither
the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding
both.

Yet men do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and
institutional contradiction. The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups
and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate connection between
the pattern of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary men do not usually know
what this connection means for the kinds of men they are becoming and for the kinds of history in
which they might take art. They do not possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the
interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world. They cannot cope with
their personal troubles in such ways as to control the structural transformation that usually lie
behind them. Surely it is no wonder. In what periods have so many men been so totally exposed
at so fast a pace to such earthquakes of change? That Americans have not known such
catastrophic changes as have men and women of other societies is due to historical facts that are
now quickly becoming “merely history.” The history that now affects every man is world
history. Within this scene and this period, in the course of a single generation, 1/6 of mankind is
transformed from all that is feudal and backward to all that is modern, advanced, and fearful.
Political colonies are freed, new and les visible forms of imperialism installed. Revolutions occur;
men feel the intimate grip of new kinds of authority. Totalitarian societies rise and are smashed to

1 Environment, setting

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bits or succeed fabulously. After two centuries of ascendancy, capitalism is shown up as only one
way to make society into an industrial apparatus. After two centuries of hope, even formal
democracy is restricted to a quite small portion of mankind. Everywhere in the underdeveloped
world, ancient ways of life are broken up and vague expectations became urgent demands.
Everywhere in the overdeveloped world, the means of authority and of violence become total in
scope and bureaucratic in form. Humanity itself now lies before us, the super nation at either
pole concentrating its most coordinated and massive efforts upon the preparation of WW III.

The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in
accordance with cherished values. And which values? Even when they do not panic, men often
sense that older ways of feeling and thinking have collapsed and that newer beginnings are
ambiguous to the point of moral stasis. Is it any wonder that ordinary men feel that they cannot
cope with the larger worlds with which they are so suddenly confronted? That they cannot
understand the meaning of their epoch for their own lives? That in defense of selfhood they
become morally insensible, trying to remain altogether private men? Is it any wonder that they
come to be possessed by a sense of the trap?

It is not only information that they need in this Age of Fact, information often dominates
their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it. It is not only the skills of reason
that they need- although their struggles to acquire these often exhaust their limited moral energy.

What they need, and what they feel they need, is quality of mind that will help them use
information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the
world and of what may be happening within themselves. It is this quality, I am going to contend,
that journalists and scholars, artists and publics, scientists and editors are coming to expect of
what may be called the sociological imagination.

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.
It enables him to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their daily experience, often
become falsely conscious of their social positions. Within that welter, the framework of modern
society is sought, and within that framework the psychologies of a variety of men and women are
formulated. By such means the personal uneasiness of individuals is focused upon explicit
troubles and the indifference of publics is transformed into involvement with public issues.

The first fruit of this imagination and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it
is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by
locating himself within this period, that he can know his chances in life only by becoming aware
of those of all individuals in his circumstances. In many ways, it is a terrible lesson; in many
ways a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of man’s capabilities for supreme effort or
willing degradation, for agony or glee, for pleasurable brutality or the sweetness of reason. But in
our time we have come to know that the limits of “human nature” are frighteningly broad. We
have come to know that every individual lives, from one generation to the next, in some society;
that he lives out a biography, and that he lives it out within some historical sequence. By the fact
of his living he contributes, however minutely, to the shaping of this society and to the course of
its history, even as he is made by society and by its historical push and shove.

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations
between the two within society. That is its task and promise. To recognize this task and this
promise is the mark of the classical social analyst. It is characteristic of Herbert Spencer-turgid,
polysyllabic, comprehensive; of E.A. Ross-graceful, muckraking, upright; of Auguste Comte and
Emile Durkheim; of the intricate and subtle Karl Mannheim. It is the quality of all that is
intellectually excellent in Karl Marx; it is the clue to Thorstein Veblen’s brilliant and ironic
insight, to Joseph Schumpter’s many sided constructions of reality; it is the basis of the
psychological sweep of W.E.H. Lecky no less than of the profundity and clarity of Max Weber.
And it is the signal of what is best in contemporary studies of man and society.

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No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of
their intersections within a society, has completed its intellectual journey. Whatever the specific
problems of the classical social analysts, however limited or however broad the features of social
reality they have examined, those who have been imaginatively aware of the promise of their
work have consistently asked three sorts of questions [these are questions the author poses, i.e.
food for thought, your homework assignment is at the END of the reading selection]:

1. What is the structure of this particular society as a whole? What are its essential
components, and how are they related to one another? How does it differ from other varieties of
social order? Within it, what is the meaning of any particular feature for its continuance and for
its change?

2. 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 development of humanity as a whole?
How does any particular feature we are examining affect, and how it is affected by, the historical
period in which it moves? And this period- what are its essential features? How does it differ
from other periods? What are its characteristic ways of history making?

3. 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? And what is the meaning for
“human nature” of each and every feature of the society we are examining?

Whether the point of interest is a great power state or a minor literary mood, a family, a
prison, a creed-these are the kinds of questions the best social analysts have asked. They are the
intellectual pivots of classical studies of man in society and they are the questions inevitably
raised by any mind possessing the sociological imagination. For that imagination is the capacity
to shift from one perspective to another- from the political to the psychological; from examination
of single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the
theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies
of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote
transformations to the most intimate features of the human self and to see the relations between
the two. Back of its use there is always the urge to know the social and historical meaning of the
individual in the society and in the period in which he has his quality and his being.

That, in brief, is why it is by the means of the sociological imagination that men now
hope to grasp what is going on in the world, and to understand what is happening in themselves
as minute points of intersections of biography and history within society. In large part,
contemporary man’s self-conscious view of himself as at least an outsider, if not a permanent
stranger, rests upon an absorbed realization of social relativity and of the transformative power of
history. The sociological imagination is the most fruitful form of this self-consciousness. By its
use men whose mentalities have swept only a series of limited orbits often come to feel as if
suddenly awakened in a house with which they had only supposed themselves to be familiar.
Correctly or incorrectly, they often come to feel that they can now provide themselves with
adequate summations, cohesive assessments, and comprehensive orientations. Older decisions
that once appeared sound now seem to them products of a mind accountably dense. Their
capacity for astonishment is made lively again. They acquire a new way of thinking; they
experience a transvaluation of values: in a word, by their reflection and perhaps by their
sensibility, they realize the cultural meaning of the social sciences.

Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works is
between “the personal troubles of the milieu” and the “public issues of social structure.” This
distinction is an essential tool of the sociological imagination and a feature of all classic work in
social science.

Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his
immediate relations with others; they have to do with his self and with those limited areas of his

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social life of which he is directly and personally aware. Accordingly, the statement and the
resolution of troubles properly lie within the individual as a biographical entity and within the
scope of his immediate milieu- the social setting that is directly open to his personal experience
and to some extent his willful activity. A trouble is a private matter: Values cherished by an
individual are felt to him to be threatened.

Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual
and the range of his inner life. They have to do with the organization of many such milieu into
the institutions of a historical society as a whole, with the ways in which various milieu overlap
and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of social and historical life. An issue is a public
matter: Some value cherished by politics is felt to be threatened. Often there is a debate about
what that value really is and about what it is that really threatens it. This debate is often without
focus if only because it is the very nature of an issue, unlike even widespread trouble, that it
cannot very well be defined in terms of the immediate and everyday environments of everyday
men.

An issue, in fact, often involves a crisis in institutional arrangements, ad often too it
involves what Marxists call “contradictions” or “antagonisms.” In these terms, consider
unemployment. When, in a city of 100,000 only one man is unemployed, that is his personal
trouble, and for its relief we properly look to the character of the man, his skills, and his
immediate opportunities. But when in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million men are
unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its solution within the range of
opportunities open to any one individual. The very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both
the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the
economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and
character of a scatter of individuals.

Consider war. The personal problem of war, when it occurs, may be how to survive it or
how to die in it with honor; how to make money out of it; how to climb into the higher safety of
the military apparatus; or how to contribute to the war’s termination. In short, according to one’s
values, to find a set of milieu and within it to survive the war or make one’s death in it
meaningful. But the structural issues of war have to do with its causes; with what types of men it
throws up into command; with its effects upon economic and political, family and religious
institutions, with the unorganized irresponsibility of a world of nation-states.

Consider marriage. Inside a marriage a man and a woman may experience personal
troubles, but when the divorce rate during the first four years of marriage is 250 out of every
1,000 attempts, this is an indication of a structural issue having to do with institutions of marriage
and the family and other institutions that bear upon them.

Or consider the metropolis-the horrible, beautiful, ugly, magnificent sprawl of the great
city. For many upper-class people, the personal solution to “the problem of the city” is to have an
apartment with private garage under it in the heart of the city, and forty miles out, a house by
Henry Hill, garden by Garrett Eckbo, on a hundred acres of private land. In these two controlled
environments-with a small staff at each and a private helicopter connection-most people could
solve many of the problems of personal milieu caused by the facts of the city. But all this,
however splendid, does not solve the public issues that the structural fact of the city possesses.
What should be done about this wonderful monstrosity? Break it all up into scattered units,
combining residence and work? Refurbish it as it stands? Or, after evacuation, dynamite and
build new cities according to new plans in new places? What should those plans be? And who is
to decide and to accomplish whatever choice is made? These are structural issues; to confront
them and to solve them requires us to consider political and economic issues that affect
innumerable milieu.

Insofar as an economy is so arranged that slumps occur, the problem of unemployment
becomes incapable of personal solution. Insofar as war is inherent in the nation-state system and
in the uneven industrialization of the world, the ordinary individual in his restricted milieu will be

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powerless- with or without psychiatric aid- to solve the troubles this system or lack of system
imposes upon him. Insofar as the family as an institution turns women into darling little slaves
and men into their chief providers and unweaned dependents, the problem of a satisfactory
marriage remains incapable of purely private solution. Insofar as the overdeveloped megalopolis
and the overdeveloped automobile are built-in features of the overdeveloped society, the issues of
urban living will not be solved by personal ingenuity and private wealth.

What we experience in various and specific milieu, I have noted, is often caused by
structural changes. Accordingly, to understand the changes of many personal milieu we are
required to look beyond them. And the number and variety of such structural changes increase as
the institutions within which we live become more embracingly and more intricately connected
with one another. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility is to be
capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieu. To be able to do that is to
possess the sociological imagination.

Discussion

“The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations
between the two within society. That is its task and its promise.”

That’s an ambitious agenda but, even as a beginner, you can begin to realize that promise
by asking three sorts of questions: those referring to structure, history and biography.
When asking these three basic questions, you need to differentiate between the two basic
elements of society (biography and history). Differentiate between the “personal troubles
of the milieu” and the “public issues of structure.”

• Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his
immediate relations with others.

• Issues have to do with matters that transcend the local environments of the
individual and the range of his inner life.

Answer the following questions based on the contemporary world (large or small, local or
global). You may focus on one aspect of a particular society (small-scale) or the entire society as
whole. Please be sure to indicate how you’re defining society and/or if you’re focusing on one
narrow subsection of a type of society:
1. STRUCTURE: What is this structure of this particular society as a whole? What are the
essential component parts? How do these parts relate to one another? How does this society differ
from others?
2. HISTORY: Where does this society stand in human history? What are the essential features of
this historical period? How did/does social change happen? What macro (large-scale, structural)
trends cause social problems?
3. BIOGRAPHY: What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this
period? How is human behavior changing? In what ways are social characteristics shaped? Which
characteristics are encouraged and which are repressed? How is human “nature” shaped by
society’s dominant institutions?