Sociological Imagination By C. Wright Mills

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Short Paper #1 What is sociological imagination? This isn’t a newly coined term; C. Wright Mills wrote about sociological imagination in 1959. He described it as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society.” What must one do in order to possess a sociological imagination? To have a sociological imagination you must be able to step outside of any situation and explore it from another perspective, rather than seeing things through your own point of view. It’s important to have a sociological imagination for it gives you the opportunity to think outside of the box. If you take a step back, many problems we all face are issues that are related to strongly rooted flaws in our society. Mills starts …show more content…

It’s complicated because both personal and public problems are intertwined. Mills described a personal trouble as a private matter where values that are cherished by an individual are felt to be threatened. A public issue is quite similar but on a macro level. A public issue is a value cherished by the public that is felt to be threatened. A great example Mills used was marriage. All marriages have troubles, but when divorce rates within the first four years are so steep it is a sign of an issue within the institution of marriage. Sometimes the stars are truly not aligned for couples. In that case the marriage was never going to be successful. But when the divorce rate is 250 out of every 1,000 attempts there is an intervening variable causing public issue and personal trouble to overlap. It’s important to understand the difference between the two. The personal issue and public trouble we experience are often caused by structural change. If someone has a public issue and is trying to resolve it as if it were a personal trouble, then the problem would never get resolved. If 15 million people are unemployed out of 50 million no one person will be able to solve that trouble on their own. Knowing the difference between a personal trouble and a public issue helps determine how to go about solving the

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