Sociological Imagination by C Wright Mills (1916-1962)

In 1959, the American sociologist Charles Wright Mills used the term sociological imagination
to explain the nature of sociology and relevance in everyday life. Mills received his education
from University of Texas and his PhD. from the University of Wisconsin in 1941 and joined
the sociology as a faculty at Columbia University. Some of his significant sociological works
include Character and Social Structure (1953; with H.H. Gerth) and The Sociological
Imagination (1959).

In sociological imagination, the major concern is to stop boxing their personal situations but
open up to the wider landscape of the world. It encourages to think outside the box. So, try to
go beyond individual and look at the wider world. Going outside the box means going outside
your comfort zone and to a little bit of research than the usual perceptions.

What is sociological imagination revolves around the points given below;

- Biography and history

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations
between the two within society. To truly understand people’s behaviour and thoughts we must
focus on the larger social context in which they live. The life of an individual cannot be
adequately understood without references to the institutions within his biography is enacted
(C.W.Mills).

As a sociologist student, you will be exploring everyday life that are familiar to you and look
at from the familiar angle. However, the sociological imagination requires us, above all, to
think ourselves away from the familiar routines of our daily lives in order to look at them a
new (Mills 1959). You will start to look at the issues in the view point of other people and
importantly you will start with empathy, which means you situate yourself in another person’s
shoe or see the world from their eyes. So, what you will see as a sociologist to study society,
everything can be subject to the sociological imagination.

Each of us has a place in the world. But as we relate to one another the way we develop, over
time, a place in that history we were born into. History cannot exist, per se, without people both
living it and making it. You live in an historically specific moment that was constructed out of
a series of such moments. As well, you are making history now. Sociology is where biography
and history meet. It is where you, as a person, interact with those larger forces around you what
Durkheim called social facts.

For example, why do people get divorce? You may get to list different reasons; it may be
personal reason that they were divorced, it may be conflict etc. But what C.W. Mills really
wants you to do is go beyond the personal and take into account of public issues of the social
structure. So, if we look at the divorce rate, we can also find different reasons such as legal
changes in the divorce laws, make easier and cheaper for people to get divorce. Women and
work force is also another reasons. And this mean that they can also support themselves
financially and which of course have led to another reason which is there is education

1
opportunities for them. So, what we usually do is what we have taken from personal reason
and explore more on societal influences. And what we explore the private everyday life
experiences we also need to look at the context why society are going beyond individual and
why its familiar to you and I then further explore the explanations that might occur.

A key element in the sociological imagination is the ability to view one’s own society as an
outsider world, and not from the limited perspectives of personal experiences and cultural
biases. Sociological imagination allows to go beyond personal experience and in attempting to
understand social behaviour, sociologists rely on an unusual type of creative thinking. C.
Wright Mills described such thinking as sociological imagination, an awareness of the
relationship between an individual and the wider society and the world at large. Sociological
Imagination highlights that a distinct relationship exists between self and society. It also allows
us to go beyond personal experiences and observations to understand broader issues. It can
bring new understanding to daily life around us. It allows me to get out of my own personal
ideas about the problem and instead look at it from social stand point. Once I can do that then
I can start identifying from individual short coming. Mills stated “Neither the life of an
individual nor history of a society can be understood without understanding both”.

The one thing he talked about is a personal problem and public issue. Mills identified “troubles”
(personal challenges) and “issues” (larger social challenges) that are key principles for
providing us with a framework for really wrapping our minds around many of the hidden social
processes that occur in an almost invisible way in today’s societies. According to Mills,
personal troubles are private problems experienced within the character of the individual and
the range of their immediate relation to others.

For instance, our daily lives are spent among friends and family, at work and at play; apart
from exposing to social media like watching television, surfing internet etc. There are
thousands of ways having interpersonal interactions through different sources without many of
us even knowing they exist.

Besides, we have our education institutions, religious beliefs, political ideology, culture and
traditions that had shaped and mould our lives, consciously or unconsciously or in sub-
conscious mind. Whereas the larger social issues are those that lie beyond one’s personal
control and the range of one’s inner life. These are rooted in society not in individual. Mills
identified that we function in our personal lives as actors and actresses who make choices about
our friends, family, group work, school and other issues within our control.

For example, Mills discusses unemployment, war, marriage, living in metropolis in his book.
Let us take the case of unemployment. If a person is unemployed, then people in the society
may say the person is not willing to work, lazy fellow or doesn’t have required skill but this is
not so if twenty per cent of a populations are unemployed then it becomes a social issue. Now
Mills would say the public problem is the issues that lies in the mismanagement of the society.
So, here is the issue that sociologists need to study the cause of unemployment.

Mills emphasised in the sociological imagination the ‘quality of mind’ that allows one to grasp
“history and biography and the relations between the two within society.”

2
Now if you have to study any natural phenomena, we have to study the past as well. Because
if there is something happening at present then it is because of the past that have happened.
Many of the problems are faced within society have social roots. These roots are related to the
structure of society and changes happening within it. Hence, these roots often related to the
structure of the society. So if we have to study any phenomena we have to study the present
and go back to study the past as well. There could be any factor like socio-cultural, political
and economic that have shaped.

Sociological imagination is simply the quality of mind that helps us with information and
developed reason to make sense of what is going in the society and how it is affecting us.
Sociological imagination is important because social structures have a real effect on
individuals. People were able to relate the situations where they live, their daily lives to local
and global societal issues affect them. In brief we can say that sociological imagination is a
perspective that helps to analyse society through the lens of an outsider.

The sociological imagination is the most fruitful form of this self-consciousness. By its use
people whose mentalities have swept only a series of limited orbits often come to feel as if
suddenly awakened in a house with which they had only supposed themselves to be familiar.

Sociological Outlook

The sociological imagination requires us, above all, to ‘think ourselves away from the familiar
routines of our daily life in order to look at them new. Consider the simple act of drinking
coffee, what could we find to say, from a sociological point of view about such a piece of
behavior.

We could point out first of all that coffee is not just refreshment. It consists of a symbolic value
as part of our day-to-day social activities, often the ritual associated with coffee drinking is
much more important than the act of consuming the drink itself. For many westerners the
morning cup of coffee stands at the centre of a personal routine. It is an essential first step to
starting the day. Morning coffee is often followed later in the day by coffee with others the
basis of a social ritual. Two people who arrange to meet for coffee are probably more interested
in getting together and chatting than in what they actually drink. Drinking and eating in all
societies, in fact, provide occasions for social interaction and the enactment of rituals and these
offer a rich subject matter for sociological study.

Second, coffee is a drug, containing caffeine, which has a stimulating effect on the brain. Many
people drink coffee for the extra lift it provides. Long days at the office and late nights studying
are made more tolerable by coffee breaks. Coffee is a habit-forming substance, but coffee
addicts are not regarded by most people in western culture as drug users.

Third the individual who drinks cup of coffee is caught up in a complicated set of social and
economic relationships stretching across the world. Coffee is a product which links people in
some of the wealthiest and most impoverished parts of the planet, it is consumed in great
quantities in wealthy countries, but is grown primarily in poor ones, and it provides many
countries, with their largest source of foreign exchange. The production and transportation of
coffee require continuous transactions between people thousands of miles away from the coffee

3
drinker. Studying such global transactions is an important task of sociology since many aspects
of our lives are now affected by worldwide social influences and communications.

Fourth, the act of sipping a coffee presumes a whole process of past social & economic
development. Along with other now familiar items of western diets like teas, bananas, potatoes
and white sugar; coffee became widely consumed only from the late 1800s. Although the drink
originated in the Middle East, its mass consumption dates, from the period of Western
expansion about a century and a half ago. Virtually all the coffee we drink today comes from
areas (South America & Africa) that were colonized by Europeans, it is in no sense a ‘natural’
part of the Western diet. The colonial legacy has had an enormous impact of the development
of the global coffee trade.

Fifth coffee is a product that stands at the heart of contemporary debates, about globalization,
international trade, human rights and environmental destruction. As coffee has grown in
popularity, it has become ‘branded’ and politicized; the decisions that consumers make about
what kind of coffee to drink and where to purchase it have become life-style choices.
Individuals may choose to drink only organic coffee, natural decaffeinated coffee or coffee that
has been ‘fairly traded’ through schemes, that pay full market prices, to small coffee producers
in developing countries. They may opt to patronize ‘independent’ coffee houses, rather than
corporate coffee chains such as starbucks which is a brand in UK. Coffee drinkers might decide
to boycott coffee from certain, with poor human rights and environmental records. Sociologist
are interested to understand how globalization heightens people awareness of issues accruing
in distant corners of the planet and prompts them to act on new knowledge in their own life.

I want to encourage you to use sociological imagination every single day. Try and see from
someone’s else perspective. It might just help you to understand their situation.

Reference

Mills, Wright, C., (1959), The Sociological Imagination, United States of America, Oxford
University Press.