C. Wright Mills
C. Wright Mills was a prominent American sociologist, author, and political activist born on August 28, 1916, in Waco, Texas. His academic journey began at Texas A&M University, followed by the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned degrees in sociology and philosophy. Mills later completed his PhD at the University of Wisconsin in 1941. He became known for his influential work in sociology, particularly his concept of the "sociological imagination," which links individual experiences with broader historical and social contexts.
Mills's writings, including "The Sociological Imagination," "The New Men of Power," and "White Collar," examined the intersections of social structure, power dynamics, and individual agency, often drawing from Marxist theory. He criticized the status quo of social systems and emphasized the importance of understanding societal influences on personal identity and experience. Throughout his life, Mills was married three times and had three children. He passed away on March 20, 1962, leaving a lasting impact on sociology as a radical thinker who believed in the potential of knowledge to drive societal improvement.
C. Wright Mills
American sociologist, journalist, and activist
- Born: August 28, 1916
- Place of Birth: Waco, Texas
- Died: March 20, 1962
- Place of Death: Nyack, New York
Education: Texas A&M University, University of Texas, and University of Wisconsin
Significance: C. Wright Mills was an American sociologist, author, and political activist.
Background
Charles Wright Mills was born on August 28, 1916, in Waco, Texas. His father, Charles Grover Mills, was an insurance salesman, and his mother, Frances Wright Mills, was a housewife. Due to the frequency of relocations by the family to various different cities in Texas, Mills was unable to form any lasting bonds of friendship, and he was very isolated during his childhood. Mills attended Dallas Technical High School, and in 1934, he graduated and enrolled at Texas A&M University. This university was a large military school, and Mills felt that attending such a school would toughen him up and demonstrate to his father that he was adequately masculine. However, Mills became very despondent at the college, and after his freshman year, he transferred to the University of Texas at Austin.
At the University of Texas, Mills completed a BA degree in sociology in 1938 and an MA degree in philosophy in 1939. Mills also met and married his first wife, Dorothy Helen Smith, while attending this college. One of his friends, who was studying literature at the university, gave Smith, an Oklahoma native, the nickname Freya after a Norwegian goddess. Mills and Smith married in October 1937. At the time of the marriage, Smith was twenty-four years old and Mills was twenty-one. Smith had previously attended Oklahoma College for Women, and she had graduated from that school with a BS degree in commerce in 1935. Smith subsequently enrolled in the MA program in sociology at the University of Texas. After she married Mills, Smith quit her own studies and began working at the women’s residence hall at the University of Texas so that she could support Mills while he completed his graduate work. During his last year as a student at the university, Mills wrote and submitted an essay titled, "Language, Logic and Culture." The essay was published in the October 1939 issue of American Sociological Review. "Language, Logic and Culture" was his first professional publication. Mills received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1941. His dissertation was titled, "A Sociological Account of Pragmatism: An Essay on the Sociology of Knowledge." In 1942, Mills became a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1945, he became a research associate at Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research, and in 1946, he became an assistant professor in the university’s sociology department.
Life’s Work
During 1944, while Mills was still working as a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, he began to submit articles and opinion pieces to scholarly journals such as The New Republic, The New Leader, and Politics. His macrosociological work was influenced heavily by the radical theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Mills agreed with Marx and Engels that society was divided sharply between the powerful and the powerless. Mills was very concerned about alienation, the creation of what sociology has dubbed the otherness identity, as well as the effects of social structure on the personality and the manipulation of people by the mass media. Mills, however, did not concur with Marx and Engels on the reason for conflict in society.
In 1959, Mills published one of his most influential books, The Sociological Imagination, in which he depicted the essential approach needed to undertake sociological work. Mills argued that micro and macro levels of analysis can be linked together by what he termed the sociological imagination. Because of the sociological imagination, Mills argued, the individual is able to understand greater historical events in terms of the private and public lives of a variety of individuals. Individuals can only understand their experiences when they are able to locate themselves within their period of history. Individual experiences and societal relationships must be connected. The three components that form the sociological imagination are history, biography, and social structure. A little earlier in his career, in 1948, Mills had published The New Men of Power: America’s Labor Leaders,and in this book, he challenged the preconceived idea that labor movements drive social consciousness towards advancement. Mills argued that labor leaders and businesspeople are actually part of the same system of capitalism and work together to maintain the status quo. In 1951, Mills published White Collar: The American Middle Classes, in which the influences of Marx and Engels are easily discerned. In this book, Mills claimed that bureaucracies have overwhelmed the individual city worker. The individual city worker has become removed from the world due to his or her inability to make any changes to it.
Mills died of a heart attack at his home in West Nyack, New York, on March 20, 1962.
Impact
Mills contributed greatly to the field of American sociology with his scholarly publications. Mills was one of the most influential radical social theorists and critics of twentieth century America. Mills also believed that with the proper use of knowledge, society could be improved for the better and that it is the responsibility of those possessing the knowledge to advance the cause.
Personal Life
In August 1940, Smith was granted a divorce from Mills. In March 1941, Mills and Smith remarried, and in January 1943, they welcomed the birth of their daughter, whom they named Pamela Mills. By 1947, Mills had divorced Smith again, and he married his research assistant, Ruth Harper. In 1955, Harper and Mills had a daughter named Kathryn Mills. In 1959, Mills divorced Harper, and later in that year, he married Yaroslava Surmach, with whom he had a son, Nikolas Mills.
Bibliography
Aptheker, Herbert. The World of C. Wright Mills. New York: Marzani & Munsell, 1960. Print.
Aronowitz, Stanley. Taking It Big: C. Wright Mills and the Making of Political Intellectuals. New York: Columbia UP, 2012. Print.
"C. Wright Mills." New World Encyclopedia. New World Encyclopedia, 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/C.‗Wright‗Mills>.
"C. Wright Mills: Power, Craftsmanship, and Private Troubles and Public Issues." Infedorg. Mark K. Smith, n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <http://infed.org/mobi/c-wright-mills-power-craftsmanship-and-private-troubles-and-public-issues/>.
Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. "C. Wright Mills." Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.Encyclopaedia Britannica,Inc., n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2016. <http://www.britannica.com/biography/C-Wright-Mills>.
Horowitz, Irving Louis. C. Wright Mills: An American Utopian. New York: Free Press, 1983. Print.
Jacobs, Jerry A., et al. "Sociological Curiosity: Updating C. Wright Mills." Sage Journals, 13 Aug. 2021, doi.org/10.1177/15365042211035337/. Accessed 29 Sept. 2024.