Mills, Charles Wright. 1959. “The Promise.” Pp. 3–24 in The Sociological Imagination.

2nd
Ed. Edited by C.W. Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.

The Promise

• Men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps, that they cannot overcome their
troubles within their everyday worlds.

• It is not only information and the skills of reason that they need. What they need, and what
they feel they need is sociological imagination.

Sociological imagination is “a quality of mind that will help them to use information
and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in
the world and of what may be happening within themselves” (Mills 1959:5)

I. Three types of questions that are consistently asked by social analysts: (6-7)

What is the structure of society as a whole? — how are the components related to one
another; how does it di er from other kinds of social order.

Where does this society stand in human history? — what is its place; how it change
over the time; how our society today di ers from the past.

What kind of men and women now exist in society today? — what ways are they
selected and formed; and they ‘human nature.’

• The life of an individual is shaped by the society and in the historical period which he lives
and belongs.

• “It is by means of the sociological imagination that men now hope to grasp what is going on
in the world, and to understand what is happening in themselves as minute points of the
intersections of biography and history within society” (Mills 1959:7)

II. Distinction between ‘personal troubles of milieu’ and ‘public issues of social structure.’ (8)

“Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his
immediate relations with others” ;experiences in an individual’s milieu. (8) Trouble is a
private matter.

“Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the
individual and range of his inner life.” (8) They have to do with organization, not as an
individual. Therefore, issue is a public matter.
Example: Unemployment. When one man is unemployed in a city, that is his personal
trouble. But if the unemployment rate in a city is high, that is an issue.

When talking about structural issue, it is incapable of purely private/personal solutions.

III. What values are supported or threatened by society. (11)

People experience well-being if they do not feel threat to some set of values.

They experience crisis if they cherished values but do feel them to be threatened.

When people are neither aware of cherished values nor experienced threat, they
experience indi erence.

If they are not aware of cherished values but aware of a threat, the experience
uneasiness.

• [Mill’s period] - a time of uneasiness and indi erence. Instead of troubles, there is often the
misery of uneasiness; instead of explicit issues, there is often the feeling that all is not right.
(11)

IV. Sociological imagination as major common denominator of our cultural life. (14)

ff
ff
ff
ff
 It is found in social and psychological sciences, but we have to look beyond them.

[Social scientists] “They do not seem to know that the use of this imagination is
central to the best work that they might do, that by failing to develop and to use it,
they are failing to meet the cultural expectations that are coming to be demanded of
them and that the classic traditions of their several discipline make available to them.”
(Mills 1959:14)

Sociological imagination is not just a fashion but a quality of mind that appears
most signi cantly to promise an awareness of the intimate realities of ourselves in
relation to larger social realities. It o ers the promise that all sensibilities will come to
play a vital role in human a airs. (15)

V. Meaning of Social Sciences (18)

‘Social Science’ - what social scientists are doing (but not doing the same thing).

There is uneasiness among social scientists in both intellectual and moral about the
direction of their chosen studies.

Mill’s view is in opposition to the views of other social scientists, which is social
science as a set of bureaucratic techniques and ‘methodological pretensions.’ They
have creates a crisis in social studies today.

The author aims to state the cultural and political meanings of social sciences, and the
problem of social science as a public issue.

• Classic social analysis is “a de nable and usable set of traditions; that its essential feature
is the concern with historical social structures; and that its problems are of direct relevance
to urgent public issues and insistent human troubles.” (Mills 1959:21)

• Classic social analysis of previous era is more useful compare to the current trend,

VI. Three ‘Tendencies’ in Sociology. (22-23)

- Each of the tendencies is subject to distortion

• Tendency I: a theory of history.

Concerned with the whole social life of a man.

Theory of man’s history

• Tendency II: a systematic theory of nature of man and society.

Concerned with a very static and generalized view of the social structure.

“All too readily becomes an elaborate and arid formalism in which the splitting of
Concepts and their less rearrangement becomes the central endeavor.” (Mills 1959:23)

• Tendency III: empirical studies of contemporary social facts and problems.

Concerned with ‘facts’ or contemporary fact.

For instance, studies of cities, and families, racial and ethnic relations, and small
groups.

- It is possible to understand the characteristics of sociology as distortions of one or more of

its traditional tendencies. But in terms of these tendencies, the promises can also be
understood. (24)

David, Randolf. 2009. “Sociology as the Re exive Side of Culture.” Philippine Sociological
fi
ff
fi
ff
fl
Review 57:1–8.

Sociology as the Re exive Side of Culture

• Taglay na kakayahan ng sociology (1)

“Ang kakayahang ito ay hango sa anyo ng pagmamasid na sosyolohikal na sadyang

kakaiba sa praktikal at karaniwan nating pananaw sa pang-araw-araw.” (David 2009:1)

• Emile Durkheim rst noted this di erence in his "The Rules of the Sociological Method.”

"We think it is a fertile idea that social life must be explained, not by the conception of it
created by those who participate in it, but by profound causes which escape
awareness.” (Durkheim 1982) — He owed this thought to Marx.

• Concept of consciousness (2)

We cannot borrow the logic of a society's existing consciousness to explain the
structure on this society. Rather, its awareness should be explained by examining the
material condition of the society from which it is based.

Remains complex; one of the weakest branches of sociology

• Concept of observation (2-3)

Niklas Luhmann suggests to use the concept of observation instead of consciousness
to avoid some theoretical problems related to the word consciousness.

We are more inclined to the visual than to the mental.

“to observe is to make a distinction. To observe is to make a cut in the world, and
to indicate what that cut contains.” - Luhmann

“First-order observers” - observing objects ; “Second-order observers” - not just

observing simple things but also the observations that other people make.

Observation of observers.

• What does it do to the culture? According to David, every culture can be considered a
framework of observation — “a way of seeing or perceiving, and therefore a framework for
making distinctions. (3)

Our lifestyle de nes our way of seeing.

cognition is "not a process of representation of the world out there. Rather, it is the
process of bringing forth a world through the process of living itself.” (Maturana 1980)

The product of this lifestyle is culture, and culture also serves as our guide in our
journey

• Culture is also a way of being blind. (3)

Every culture has blind spots —things that are outside the scope of our ancient culture.

We think that sociology is a study of social reality. But what is reality, asks Luhmann.
According to him, "Reality is what one does not perceive when one perceives it.”

The duty of sociology is to bring out the hidden reality.

We may notice that our culture is blind to the issues of social justice, the importance of
the environment, peaceful and secure future, and many more.

- Values that drive social inquiry — social justice, gender equality, ecological rationality,
economic prosperity, peace, social cohesion, technical e ciency, good governance,
democracy, etc.

• Two problems in our society: (4)

We know that there are problems in our society, but we can not tell what they are.

We want to act but we are not sure how and what we will prioritize.

fi
fi
fl
ff
ffi
 C. Wright Mills's Sociological Imagination and Talcott Parsons' Social Systems Theory
are great help [to David] to answer the two problems.

- Sociological imagination, according to Mills, encourages us to look at personal

problems in the context of existing society so that we get to see the social
structures involved in the private problems of majority. (4)

• How and what a sociologist observes: (5)

According to Parsons, a successful and stable society has several criteria:

1. Its economy is constantly creating wealth

2. Its politics creates power that can be used to achieve the goals of society.

3. Enforcement of laws and systems of justice results in unity and peace in society; and

4. The basic institutions of the family and the school that shape the identity of the
members create a strong morality and identity.

When a society fails — poverty, weakness, chaos and relentless ghting, and
demoralization and moral confusion.

• It shows here what can be considered the basic problem of our society today: (5)

Economic: Extreme poverty caused by lack of livelihood and opportunity for many.

Governance: Inability to set collective goals or directions, or lack of strong leadership

due to lack of trust in leaders, which is the result of widespread perception of
corruption.

Law and justice: Injustice leads to distrust of law and justice, and relentless strife,
rebellion and insurrection.

Identity: we have a crisis in morality (we are no longer sure what is right and wrong),
and we have a crisis in our Filipinoness that appears as indi erence to the people.

- Finding solutions to these issues is inseparable from understanding and analyzing the
causes of these problems.

- It is more necessary to analyze the roots that keep giving life to these problems.

- We are all part of the problem that we are all engaged in prolonging the life of a culture that is
no longer tted to the challenges of an evolving era.

• Re exivity is “the capacity for self-observation, and, according to Luhmann, the mark
of the modern man.” (David 2009:6)

To be able to see ourselves as making a contribution to the problems of our society is

what re exivity is all about.

- “To look at things sociologically, to me, is to observe the behavior of human beings in the
context of the social structures that constrain the way they live. It is to understand the
distinctions they employ and the choices they make in the course of their everyday lives.”
(David 2009:6)

fl
fl
fi
ff
fi