C Wright Mills The Promise Summary

C. Wright Mills was the sociologist who came up with this term we call social imagination. Think about individuality and society for a second and what those words mean to you. Social imagination is showing connections personally and the larger forces of history, individually and the society. The book goes on to explain that we are using our social imagination just by opening the book and questioning it, or when we question college in general. Mills argued we needed to see the social world that was around us, critically. Mills wanted social imagination to perceive situations and circumstances in an expanded social context. The goal was to view how interactions and actions were influential or not towards others and their situations. Though

while doing this, we get to experience that others could be having the same experiences or thoughts that we are. Social imagination always recognizes feelings. This is bettering us to grasp the history better and actually look into the past, or the main reason of something.

Given one simple word or phrase, you’re using your social imagination. The example I’m choosing is competing in collegiate sports. Some thoughts that people automatically think when you’re a college athlete is that; you’re a jock that’s in shape and you were recruited. But there are other ways this can be viewed. A person wants to be in shape, they love the sport or they want to try something new. A college athlete can go into their season totally out of shape, and be clueless about the game. So, playing a sport can be a ritual, it could run in the family, and it could be a good luck charm to some people, so they want to play as long as they can.

Students can express their social imagination by looking outside of the box, and stop thinking so simple. Question something that might be familiar to you and change it around, or look past your first thought to other possibilities. The book states, “The terrible part of the lesson is to make our own lives ordinary- that is, to see our intensely personal, private experience of life as typical of the period and place which we live.” Thinking basic is not going to help you use your social imagination; think way back and what else could have came about. Start connecting the intimate aspects of an individual into impersonal historical forces. Social imagination is one of the main approaches that sociologists use to analyze the world today.