Mills and the Sociological Imagination

C. Wright Mills published “The Sociological Imagination” in 1959. The theme of this concise book was that people often lack the perspective to understand the things that happen in their everyday lives. People are familiar with the people and events that make up the "close up scenes" of their world. What they are not familiar with are the forces at play in the greater society, history, and the world. In order to understand these forces, people need the broad historical perspective of the sociological imagination (Mills, 2000). This essay outlines Mills' concept of sociological imagination, shows what ideas influenced Mills, and how Mills' idea has influenced others.

Overview

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) was an American sociologist who is best known for his work, The Sociological Imagination. Mills' personal style and flair was uniquely American. A native Texan who energetically defended the scholar's right to academic freedom, Mills' image was iconic. His round, strong build, his black leather jacket, and his motorcycle rides to the Columbia University campus embodied American independence. Mills' work was uniquely influenced by Weber, Marx, and pragmatism. Despite the uniqueness of being an intellectual influenced by both Weber and Marx, Mills insisted that it was only natural since Weber, developed much of his work in dialogue with Marx (Mills, 2000). Mills' association with American pragmatism influenced his ideas on how the biographical relates to the historical, the role of the public intellectual, and the role of power and stratification in society. The Sociological Imagination was Mills' attempt to make evident the intersection between personal biography and history and, in doing so, to define a role for sociology and intellectuals. Mills insisted that an individual's values and actions do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, these values and actions are situated in a particular society at a particular time in history. That an individual needs to understand how they are situated is within a larger universe is what he called the sociological imagination.

The Sociological Imagination was C. Wright Mills' attempt to present a humanist approach to sociology. Mills argued that the dilemma many individuals face is one of feeling that their private everyday lives are a series of traps that they are ill equipped to overcome. Wars, economic cycles, and social change have dramatic determining effects on the private lives of individuals. It is impossible to understand one's own life without understanding the society and history in which one is situated. Yet, people rarely define their troubles by historical change and institutional contradiction.

Today, the rapid changes in society and reshaping of history outpace people's ability to orient themselves in accordance with their values. Individuals find themselves unable to defend their private lives and maintain a morally sensible approach. What they need is a quality of mind that will help them use the information available to them in order to achieve an understanding of the world they live in and how it affects their private lives. This quality of mind could be provided by intellectuals who, properly trained, could analyze the connections between the individual and the forces that shape their world. The sociological imagination was not only a frame of mind, but a sociological approach that held out a promise.

The promise of the sociological imagination is that it allows us to understand history and biography. It allows the sociologist to study the relationship between the two. It is the promise that people will be able to understand the forces of politics, business, and culture that intersect with their lives. It is when they begin to understand this that they can begin to take action and make changes. The promise is that people will be able to move from one perspective—biographical—to the other, historical. To be cognizant of these connections is to finally be able to understand and act.

Further Insights

The Influence of Weber

Value Neutrality

One of Mills' (along with Hans H. Gerth) lasting contributions to sociology in English speaking countries was the selection and translation of Max Weber's works. Despite this landmark contribution, Mills had an awkward love/hate relationship with the writings of Weber. While Mills embraced many of Weber's ideas, he also was deeply troubled by Weber's notion of intellectual value neutrality. Weber's value neutrality in the social sciences meant setting aside one's personal biases and beliefs when conducting scientific research. Mills believed (in the case of Weber) such an approach gave institutional support for Imperial Germany. Additionally, value neutrality denied the policy considerations created by social research (Horowitz, 1985). Another concern Mills had was that Weber's writings had become far too influential to American sociologists looking for an answer to Marx and the old Left. Yet despite these differences, Weber had a great influence on Mills.

Stratification

Weber's greatest influence on Mills, and perhaps all of sociology, was his concept of stratification. Weber conceives of class as an economic interest group and a function of the market. Unlike Marx, Weber emphasized economic distribution, not production, and described people sharing the same class as having the same economic situation. On one hand, Weber makes a simple argument that class is about the property one has or doesn't have. On the other hand, he makes an argument that class has a relationship with the market. Weber believed that people of a similar class have similar "life chances" in a market; that is, there are certain things in the market that they would have a chance to compete for and other things that would simply be beyond their reach. Those who own more have greater life chances because they can afford the chance to compete for more things. Throughout his book The Sociological Imagination, Mills comes across issues of stratification and refers to Weber having providing a sufficient understanding of the issue for the purpose of the particular topic being addressed.

Bureaucracy & Power

Weber also influenced Mills on his ideas of bureaucracy and power. While many understood Weber's concept as a descriptive of the everyday bureaucratic world, Mills took from Weber the concept of bureaucracy as power and clearly power that is managed by the elite. Weber noted that individuals do not surrender authority to people in positions of authority, but rather to the impersonal order, or bureaucracy, which has delegated the authority to this person. This power was preserved by the institutional rationality that Mills called the "ethos of bureaucracy" (Mills, 2000). Though it took some extrapolation on the part of Mills, a particular reading of Weber could surrender the idea that the bureaucratic state sacrificed the intellect involved in outfitting the scientific soul for its bureaucratic needs. Mills took this reading and became a public voice championing the intellectual commitment needed to combat state authority.

Mills was also influenced by Weber's idea that the social sciences were anchored in a historical context. Weber's work usually started with the analysis of a historical development of structural and/or cultural significance that had led to the emergence of a historical individual. Mills would take this idea and apply it directly to his understanding of the frustration experienced by individuals caught in the series of traps experienced in their private everyday lives.

The Influence of Marx

In a 1959 letter to the editor of the Commentary, Mills wrote that he was not a Marxist. However, he noted that Marx was one of the most astute students of modern civilization and an essential part of an adequate training in social science. If people heard echoes of Marx in Mills' work, it was only because he was properly educated. Mills understood that being a Marxist had a broader political and social implication in America beyond Marx's sociological observations. The rise of communism in Russia and China had been ideologically tied back to the writing of Marx, but the actual practice of communism in Russia and China resembled little that Marx championed. However, given the political tensions between the United States and Russian and China at the time, a scholar had to choose their words carefully. Such a careful explanation would not have been necessary for a Weberian. Mills held Marx in high esteem, but he never wrote on Marx with the ease that he did other influential theorists. In the book, Character and Social Structures, Mills writes that all social psychology done in the area of social structure works within the tradition of Marx.

In his early writings, Marx noted an organic connection between mental and social processes (Horowitz, 1985). This connection is at the core of Mills' call for the need of a sociological imagination. If people can understand this connection and how it influences the problems in their lives, then they can begin to address correcting these problems. Where Mills differs from Marx in this area is that Marx believed knowledge and social class were inseparable. Mills believed the individual had more choice in this matter; that individuals could choose their approach to knowledge.

Mills' political thought was also influenced by Marx. Though not in favor of social Marxism, Mills found Marx's work on class and power in a capitalistic society useful. These forces are present in The Sociological Imagination as well as his books, White Collar and The Power Elite. Additionally, Mills credited Marx for anchoring the individual life in historical specificity. Along with Weber, Marx is the essential influence of Mills' political sociology. Mills was greatly influenced by Marx, but did not consider himself a Marxist.

The Influence of Pragmatism

As a graduate student, Mills became interested in pragmatism as a methodology to sociology. His introduction to pragmatism included John Dewey, William Janes, George Herbert Mead, and Charles Sanders Peirce. Of these, Mead proved to be the most influential. Mills adapted Mead's concept of the "generalized other" to construct a theory of mind which takes into account the mental and the social. The power of Mead's idea is that an individual is not the product of social forces, but rather interacts with the social and then internalizes the debate and reasons. This process gives the intellect the opportunity to reformulate debate and take action.

From Peirce, Mills adapted ideas of language and argument. Language mediates behavior; it connects us and stands between us a filter for understanding events, it constitutes the individual and shared values, and reveals cultural values. Through Mead and Peirce Mills comes to understand that it is the study of language of the intellectual that offers the public an opportunity to understand the problems that vex them. Mills champions the intellectual's responsibility to work with words and concepts to advance discourse and debate on matters of policy and in civil society. The sociological imagination is a pragmatic construct brought to the forefront by intellectuals.

Mills' Influences on Sociology

The New Left

In 1960, Mills penned a letter to the New Left, which popularized the term New Left and influenced the movement on its break from the "Old Left." At the time, the New Left was a movement scattered over a number of college campuses. The most prominent group within the New Left was the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In his letter, Mills encouraged the New Left not to get bogged down with facts that can be duly weighed, carefully balanced, always hedged, and used to outrage, blunt, and destroy. He warned that reasoning collapses under reasonableness. Instead of examining the isolated and fragmentary facts, people need to connect facts to the changing institutions of society. It was the power and the authority of these institutions that needed to be challenged. He encouraged the movement to step away from labor issues and focus more on issues of authority. He also called for the movement to realize that communism had failed and the United States was not the enemy. Echoing Eisenhower's warning about the military-industrial complex, Mills believed that the enemy was the structure of authority that he referred to as the “system” or “establishment.”

Mills' advice was embraced by the New Left, particularly the leaders of SDS. Not only did the movement step away from issues of labor, but also carefully framed its language to exclude Marxist terminology. In 1963, Tom Hayden penned the Port Huron Statement of the Students for a Democratic Society. The ideas and language in the movement's manifesto closely held to the letter Mill wrote just a couple of years prior.

Teaching Sociology

Mills’ work, especially The Sociological Imagination, remains relevant today in the classroom. The American Sociological Association (ASA) has recognized the link between private troubles and public issues, between individual experience and larger social forces as one of the very few aspects of the sociological perspective on which sociologists today generally agree. His work on the sociological imagination is a critical element of what constitutes sociological education and in the view of the ASA the proper teaching of sociology includes teaching students to develop their own sociological imagination.

C. Wright Mills' work, The Sociological Imagination has remained a fundamental element of a proper sociological education. One of the primary goals of teaching sociology is to get the students to see the connections between their everyday lives and the large scale social forces that influence what they think, do, and consume. The fact that Mills’ work brings together such divergent traditions as Weber, Marx, and pragmatism only adds to the richness and possibilities of the sociological imagination.

Terms & Concepts

Life Chances: A phrase used by Max Weber to describe the circumstances of those who share a common economic class or “class situation.” Similar life chances in the marketplace correspond with similar property and income. Outcomes of distribution determine the chances to obtain personal goals.

Marx, Karl: (1818–1883). German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, and sociologist.

Marxism: A political and economic point of view derived from the ideas and writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In practice, more closely related to the political governments of Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong as opposed to Karl Marx.

Pragmatism: A philosophical movement that claims an idea of proposition is true if it works. Pragmatism is anti-Cartesian and philosopher George Mead took this to mean that consciousness and action are fully integrated.

Sociological Imagination: The ability of individuals to distinguish between their personal situation and the large scale historical, global, social, and cultural forces that complicate their lives.

Stratification: The classification of society into groups based on power and socioeconomic status

Value Neutrality: Max Weber's idea that the social scientist must approach his work only after striving to set aside all personal values and biases.

Bibliography

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Suggested Reading

Geary, D. (2009). Radical ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American social thought. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Gill, T. (2013). 'Why Mills, not Gouldner?' Selective history and differential commemoration in sociology. American Sociologist, 44, 96-115. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text.

Hayden, T. (2006). Radical nomad: C. Wright Mills and his times. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.

Scimecca, J. A. (2012). The sanitization of a radical sociologist: The case of C. Wright Mills. International Journal Of Contemporary Sociology, 49, 205-215. Retrieved October 25, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text.

Summers, J.H. (Ed.). (2008). The politics of truth: Selected writings of C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.