Analysis Of Sociological Imagination By C. Wright Mills

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Essay 1: Sociological Imagination C. Wright Mills (1959) developed sociological imagination in which it refers to the ability to see the connections between our personal lives and the social world in which we live. The sociological imagination allows people to distinguish between “private troubles”, “public issues” and visually see the connections between the events and the conditions of our lives and the social and historical context in which we live (Mooney, 2011, page 7). The difference between these two essential tools are that “private troubles” occur at the individual level and “public issues” transcends the individual in which it is an issue of public matter when some value cherished by the public is felt to be threatened. Mills captures …show more content…

It allows individuals to see how their daily life experience, often becomes falsely conscious by their social positions. The book Understand Social Problems by Linda Mooney, David Knox and Caroline Schacht uses the example that one person is unemployed constitutes a private trouble but millions of people who are unemployed in the United States establishes a public issue. Once we figure out that segments of society share personal troubles such as HIV infections and poverty, we can then look for elements of social structure and culture that contributes to public issues and personal troubles. C. Wright Mills breaks sociological imagination by saying “If various elements of social structure and culture contribute to private troubles and public issues, then society’s social structure and culture must be changed if these concerns are to be resolved” (Mooney, Knox, Schacht; page 7). Rather than viewing unemployment as a private trouble; think about how unemployment is a public issue that affects more than just one individual that results from the failure of the economic and political institutions of

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