The Promise of Sociology by C.

Wright Mills
 Nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. It is true,
however, the more aware they become, the more trapped they seem feel. The
thing is, they are bounded to their limitations especially in job, family,
neighborhood, and other things.
 However, there are certain things that are changing the more that they are
aware to their society. There are success and failures as explained and reflected
in our history. There will be ups and downs, but the thing is neither the life of an
individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding
both.
 Men do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change
and institutional contradiction. They do not correlate the achievements and
failures in the ups and downs and that’s why they do not possess the quality of
mind essential and to cope up with their personal troubles in such
transformations that usually lie behind them.
 The history that now affects every man is world history. The changes in man on
how he deals with the transformation, is also related to how the world deals with
the transformation. From all feudal lands to modern, advanced, and fearful
communities. Many forms of government are formed, power, and authority
become humans’ form of making the government.
 There are some instances that the very shaping of history now outpaces the
ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values. The old
ways are now replaced by new beginnings. We need to have a quality of mind
that will help us to use the information in our surroundings to cope up in sudden
changes in our world. This is called Sociological Imagination.
 The Sociological Imagination enables us to see the bigger picture of individuals in
our society. The first fruit of this imagination is that – an individual can
understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself
within his period and aware to his circumstances. This idea, however, can be a
good or a bad lesson depending on its time frame, but the limitation to this idea
is frighteningly broad. We do not know for sure but as the generation gets
replaced by the new generation, a society is also replaced.
 The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the
relations between the two within society. That is its task and the promise of
sociology. According to Herbert Spencer, he defines the promise of sociology as
“the mark of the classic social analyst”, “turgid, polysyllabic, comprehensive”
from E.A. Ross, “graceful, muckcraking, upright” from August Comte and Emile
Durkheim, “intricate and subtle” from Karl Mannheim. Karl Max said that this is
the quality of all that is intellectually excellent, “it is the basis of the
psychological sweep” from W.E.H. Lecky.
 Those people who have been imaginatively aware of the promise of sociology
consistently asked three sorts of questions:
1. What is the structure of this particular society as a whole?
2. Where does this society stand in human history?
3. What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this
period?

 For that sociological imagination is the capacity to shift from one perspective to
another, we must remote ourselves to the transformations of our most intimate
features of ourselves.

 That is why by means of 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.

 In large part, contemporary man’s self-conscious view of himself as at least an

outsider, if not a permanent stranger, rests upon an absorbed realization of
social relativity and of the transformative power of history.

 The sociological imagination is the most fruitful form of this self-consciousness.

 Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination
works is between “the personal troubles of millieu” and “the public issues of
social structure.” This distinction is an essential tool of the sociological
imagination and a feature of all classic work in social science.

 Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his
immediate relations with others; it is also a private matter and within the scope
of the individual. Values cherished by an individual are felt by him to be
threatened.

 Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the
individual and the range of his inner life; it is also a public matter. Some value
cherished by publics is felt to be threatened. An issue, in fact, often involves a
crisis in institutional arrangements, and often too it involves what Marxists call
“contradictions” or “antagonisms.”

 To understand the changes of many personal milieux we are required to look

beyond them. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with
sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of
milieux.