The Sociological Imagination By C Wright Mills

C Wright Mills was one of the most influential sociologists of the 20th century. He was the author of The Sociological Imagination, where he proposed the relationship between a person’s biography and history. He defines sociological imagination as “the awareness of the relationship between a person’s experience and the wider society.” Mills created this phrase to describe how people must possess the ability to see things socially and how things affect and influence them personally, as well as socially, as a whole. He emphasized that change in society exerts direct, profound influence on the people living in that society. First, I’ll introduce Mills’s upbringing and how it influenced his worldview. C. Wright Mills was born in Texas. He grew

Wright Mills wrote a book called The Sociological Imagination, in which he is most known for his critique of sociology. In The Sociological Imagination, Mills defines sociological imagination as “An awareness of the relationship between a person's behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person’s choices and perceptions.” When looking at this definition, we come to find that it basically means to think outside of the “norm.” The Sociological Imagination had a heavy impact on American sociology. The book is imprinted with European sociology and how Mills uses this to craft his views on American perceptions. In this book, Mills observed that American sociology was influenced by two main traditions, which consist of the abstract theory and the abstract empiricism. The purpose of The Sociological Imagination was for Mills to oppose these traditions and to influence the way American sociology works. Likewise, in his book, Mills resists the “normal” way sociologists use research techniques when constructing a sociological analysis. He sees sociology as the study of humans and their behavior, thus seeing that humans are beyond a piece of data on a chart. Mills believed that sociology was created to evolve social systems, such as when his life was changed from a person in poverty to a person of success. Mills’s book, The Sociological Imagination, impacted the world of sociology and showed more of the interactive component of sociology instead

Wright Mills has made many contributions to the discipline of sociology. From my perspective, Mills’s most important contribution to sociology was the opposition of the traditional “norms.” Many sociologists followed the ideas of Max Weber, Karl Marx, Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, and many more, who based their sociological analysis on numerical data. Although Mills valued these ideas, he had his own opinion. Mills sees sociology as about humans and their attitude instead of just numbers. He understood the personal levels of sociology and how to connect a person’s experiences with the social factors of their society. Mills wanted to interpret the factors of how humans interact and how they are more diverse instead of thinking they all are the same. The connection to human feelings, rather than the numbers, in sociological studies is, by far, Mills most important contribution to