Readings :: The Sociological Imagination

The Sociological Imagination
By C. Wright Mills

The link goes to a later version; my version of this 1959 classic is dated 1967. It's part of a used book haul I collected during the pandemic. 

To be honest, I get nervous when reading these classics. They are usually outside my field (I'm not a sociologist) and although I sometimes see them cited, they were not covered in my undergraduate or graduate classes and are not a big part of the conversation in my discipline. So please regard these notes as an outsider trying to figure out how this classic relates to writing studies in 2021.

How does it relate? The book actually reminds me of the framework essays and books that were trendy in the 1980s and 1990s in writing studies as we tried to figure out our field. In these essays, the author usually sets up three or four camps in which they* can divide the field, then compares, contrasts, and critiques each camp. In many cases, the author implies allegiance with the last camp discussed.

* NOTE: I'm trying to use they for indeterminate pronouns since this practice has been recently sanctioned. In previous book reviews, I have typically alternated singular pronouns (she/he) or pluralized the noun.

Here, Mills notes the issue that people are facing "nowadays" (i.e., 1959) in which the more aware we are of other locales, ambitions, and threats, the more trapped we feel. The individual and social must be understood together, he says, but we usually don't understand them that way (p.3). People need to be able to use information to sum up what is happening in the world and in themselves, and this is what he terms the "sociological imagination" (p.5). But to do this, we need sociological theory, and those who use it have been asked three kinds of questions:

• What is the structure of the society as a whole?
• Where does it stand in human history?
• Who prevails in this society? (pp.6-7)

To address these questions, he attempts to define the meaning of social sciences for the "cultural tasks of our time" (p.18). He detects three tendencies in classical sociology:

• theory of history
• systematic theory of the nature of man [sic] and society
• empirical studies of social facts and problems (p.23)

He addressed the first under "Grand Theory" (Ch.2). Among other things, he addresses the basic question of power: who decides the social arrangements under which we live (p.40)? He specifically looks at three dominant orders:

• economic 
• political
• military

which are coordinated in totalitarian countries (p.46). 

In Chapter 3, he discusses "abstracted empiricism," in which (he complains) investigators collect a sample of people, interview them, reduce the interviews to statistics based on scales, and yield public opinion (p.50). One problem with this approach is that the methodology determines a narrow range of questions to investigate (p.55). Abstract empiricism is not the same as the concrete behavior of people, and it favors problems of milieux rather than structure (p.61) as well as reducing social realities to psychological variables (p.63). That is, it assumes that the fundamental source of information is individuals, and thus understands the institutional structure of the society through individuals (p.67). In contrast, he argues for a sociological method that has general relevance and is logically connected (p.73). 

In Chapter 4, he discusses types of practicality. Here, he mentions that "classical economics has been the major ideology of capitalism as a system of power," but is "fruitfully misunderstood," just as "the work of Marx is used by Soviet publicists today" (p.82). In Chapter 5, "The Bureaucratic Ethos," he adds that "work in modern industry is work within a hierarchy: there is a line of authority and hence, from the under-side, a line of obedience," and "a great deal of work is semi-routine," meaning stereotyped work. Put these two together and "it becomes evident that work in a modern factory involves discipline" and thus "the factor of power, so coyly handled by human relations experts, is thus central to an adequate understanding of problems of morale" (p.93). 

In Chapter 7, he concludes that "what social science is properly about is the human variety, which consists of all the social worlds in which men [sic] have lived, are living, and might live" (p.132). 

In Chapter 9, he argues that freedom is "the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them—and then, the opportunity to choose" and thus freedom requires a broad role for human reason (p.174). 

Okay, I think that's enough Mills. Not being enmeshed in mid-20th century sociology, I am sure I have not caught everything Mills threw at me. But I did find this broad, discipline-wide discussion of different lines of thought to be interesting and useful. If you're interested in these sorts of discussions, pick this book up.