C Wright Mills Sociological Imagination

Branded clothing, newly-released gadgets, and other luxuries are things that seem unreachable for us. In contrast, what we mostly have are clothes that we bought from thrift shifts or from the ukay-ukay, as what they are called, second-hand gadgets that were given only by our relatives, and other things bought at cheaper prices in the market. These create a picture of how are family is – what we have been deprived and how we live our daily life.
My family derives its daily income from the boundary of our own jeepney that my father drives. What we earn does not fully provide for all our needs; the tuition fee of my brother and other household utilities are some of the things we still need to secure. This often leads us to incur debts from money-lending institutions and from our relatives. Looking from these aspects, the possibility for us to rise from our meager condition is still far; unless miracles happen along the way. However, it appears to me that what we experience is not unique, because most families belonging to the middle and lower classes, whose main source of income comes from public utility vehicles (PUV), share almost the same sentiments. The concept of C. Wright Mills’s “Sociological Imagination” maybe helpful to understand in a wider perspective our experiences and how these circumstances persist in the Philippine society. Mills (1959) defines Sociological Imagination as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experiences and the wider society.” It