SOC100-1601(Intro To Sociology)

Prof. D. Peppas

9/5/2018

The Sociological Imagination

Chapter One: The Promise

C. Wright Mills (1959)

1. “Even when they do not panic, people often sense that older ways of feeling and thinking have

collapsed and that newer beginnings are ambiguous to the point of moral stasis.”

2. “Whether the point of interest is a great power state or a minor literary mood, a family, a

prison, a creed - these are the kinds of questions the best social analysts have asked.”

Collective Effervescence”.

Emile Durkheim
1,” a category of facts which present very special characteristics: they consist of manners of

acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power

by virtue of which they exercise control over him”.

2. “The first and most important rule is to treat social facts as things.”

What is a Social Fact?” Rules of Sociological Method.

1.” hey were 'de veloped unmethodicaHy in order to satisfy needs that are of an exclusively

practical nature, are devoid of any scientific value.”

2.” exte al to all individuals in a given society or group': hence, the o en repeated charge against

him that he 'hypostasised' or reified society, a charge which is by no means unfounded.”