The Sociological Imagination, The Promise
To begin chapter one of The Sociological Imagination, ‘The Promise’, Mills explains the state of the everyday man during the 1950s. He describes this state as one of both imprisonment and helplessness.
On one hand, men are restrained by the habit of their own lives: they go to their job and are an operative, and then are a family-man once they arrive home. There are many restricted jobs that men carry-out, and a look at man’s everyday life shows that men cycle through these different jobs. However, men are also helpless in the face of greater and universal political situations which they cannot themselves manage.
In the 1950s, chased by anxieties over nuclear warfare and pressures between the United States and the Soviet Union in the
Cold War, there is gradually a sense that the larger issues confronting men today are not something the everyday man can influence. They go to work and they go home, but they don’t appear to have a part to play in universal politics.
To be able to understand this circumstance, Mills says, society should take on a “sociological imagination.” When Mills say Imagination, he means a way of thinking and asking questions. To have a sociological imagination means observing the world sociologically, asking sociological questions and then delivering sociological findings to those questions.
Mills summarizes three kinds of questions social analysts usually ask, which are; what is the structure of society? What is the position of society in history? And What types of people does society create?
On one hand, men are restrained by the habit of their own lives: they go to their job and are an operative, and then are a family-man once they arrive home. There are many restricted jobs that men carry-out, and a look at man’s everyday life shows that men cycle through these different jobs. However, men are also helpless in the face of greater and universal political situations which they cannot themselves manage.
In the 1950s, chased by anxieties over nuclear warfare and pressures between the United States and the Soviet Union in the
Cold War, there is gradually a sense that the larger issues confronting men today are not something the everyday man can influence. They go to work and they go home, but they don’t appear to have a part to play in universal politics.
To be able to understand this circumstance, Mills says, society should take on a “sociological imagination.” When Mills say Imagination, he means a way of thinking and asking questions. To have a sociological imagination means observing the world sociologically, asking sociological questions and then delivering sociological findings to those questions.
Mills summarizes three kinds of questions social analysts usually ask, which are; what is the structure of society? What is the position of society in history? And What types of people does society create?