Sociological Imagination

Reading 101 Week 3
C.W Mills “The sociological perspective- The promise of sociology”

With dramatic social changes, ordinary man feel that they cannot cope with larger world, often sense the old way of feeling and thinking have collapsed and the new beginning are ambiguous to the point of moral stasis.

They need not only information, skill of reasoning, but most of all they need
“Sociological Imagination”-a quality of mind and ability to

o Help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on and what may be happening.
o To understand the large historical scenes of its meaning for the inner life, and external career of a variety of individuals.
o To understand his own experience, gauge his own fate and know his own changes in life by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.

The fruit of it is self-consciousness. From personal troubles of milieu into public issues of social structure.

The process of sociological imagination:

Individuals troubles transcend into the institutions of an historical society as a whole, become a public matter,
The issues define value often involves a crisis in institutional arrangement. Individuals ‘experiences in various and specific milieu is often caused by structural changes.