Sociological Imagination

Sociological imagination is the term given to understanding the links between history and modern society, and the intricate connections between individuals and the society they live in. It enables people to understand the distinction, and at the same time the relation, between personal troubles and public issues. Today, as it was in the mid-twentieth century, people feel their personal lives have become traps. For many reasons and in many ways, society has yet evolved so that ordinary people feel they have the power to overcome their troubles.
Personal troubles exist in the realm of individuals where personal values are threatened, and public issues relate to historical society as a whole and occur when the values of publics are threatened. Work-life balance is a rising issue in the public eye. As a public issue, societal pressures drive calls for limitations in paid working hours for employees. Personal troubles arise then, where set working hours can’t provide the remuneration necessary to support a family. This in turn threatens many aspects of that person’s life. When considering acceptable forms of disciplining children, standards are forced to reflect public values. While the public’s issue resides in their welfare, personal troubles arise where parents have challenging children but are restricted by objective legislation, threatening a parents much needed sense of authority.
Other distinctions between public issues and private troubles are exemplified through business failures. Individual small business owners suffer personal troubles and bankruptcies in their early years of operation, while society is concerned by rising business failure figures despite positive economic trends (Dun & Bradstreet, 2012). Such is the connotation in Mill’s work; individual men are so overwhelmed in their own troubles that they miss the ever important connection between their own troubles and society’s issues.
The mid-twentieth century saw a time of men feeling overwhelmed and trapped within their own personal, routinary lives. Seemingly, the average modern day man suffers the same feeling. In many ways, people are still feeling the consequences of the world of change last century’s era of modernisation brought about. Modernisation, in conjunction with industrialisation, sought people out of their homes and coerced them into work alongside strangers. But strangers remained strangers, and people, overwhelmed and confronted by change withdrew into their own personal lives. Invariably this state of withdrawal caused widespread lack of communication; and so man’s modern day troubles began. People, then and now, find themselves trapped within their own realm of knowledge; troubles cannot be overcome when considered in the same capacity they were created.
Half a century on, people remain trapped in the same ways Mills expressed in the ‘Sociological Imagination’. Working is an accepted necessity in today’s society. Rising living expenses have driven a spike in long working hours, while individuals are simultaneously under pressure to spend quality time with their family. One cannot always support a household and have time to relax with them. Parents of children inherently feel responsible for their protection, and social trends are stimulating pressure for teenagers to be driving modern and safer motor vehicles. Changing societies place new, unspoken expectations on parents; the choice becomes financial burden or a distinguished feeling of failure and disappointment. In these situations, men and women are perfectly justified feeling powerless and trapped. Under these circumstances, what can they do?