The Sociological Imagination By C. Wright Mills

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C. Wright Mills, author of "The Sociological Imagination," describes what he believes to be the “quality of mind” (Mills, 1959. 4). This quality of mind allows individuals to step out of their daily roles and identify the structures and institutions that are influencing society and impact their experiences throughout their lives and the influence of their people. . Mills believed that freedom was an illusion and that our preoccupation with or daily lives as parents, students, children, kept us in a strict role that kept our minds “trapped”. Mills says “the sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals." Majority …show more content…

The sociological imagination by C. Wright Mills is defined by “the awareness between personal experience and the wider society”. This theory symbolizes to the connection between individual plights and the large social forces that are the motivating forces behind them. The intent of the sociological imagination is to see the broader picture within which individuals live their lives; to distinguish individual troubles and communal matters as two aspects of a single process. Sociological imagination aids the individual to comprehend the culture in which they live in by moving the individual away from actuality and looking beyond the picture itself. History and individuals personal life cannot be understood in its entirety without understand the context of them both. In C. Wright Mills: The sociological imagination, he uses evidence that may be familiar with us all. In daily life, we see only the narrow-minded sights that are familiar to our family, work, and leisure activities. Mills believed that this kept the typical person from seeing the "big picture," the relation between biography and history. “When classes rise or fall, a man is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down a man takes a new heart or goes broke.

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