Sociological Imagination By C. Wright Mills
‘Sociological imagination’ is a term coined by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills, in his attempt to reconcile two abstract concepts of social reality – “personal troubles” and “public issues” i.e. the individual and the society; providing a new perspective on the analysis and the study of sociology. In The Sociological Imagination, his magnum opus, Mills defines sociological imagination as “…the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society”, and describes it as: o “…the capacity to shift from one perspective to another” o “capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intrinsic features of the human self – and to see the relations between the two” (Mills, 1959)
By this, we can understand that sociological imagination is an insight into the effect of society on an individual, offering a broader perspective into an individual’s thoughts and actions, and thereby, emphasising the role of society on the life of an individual.
Sociological imagination can also be understood as the capacity of an individual to study the above effect, objectively, and establish the relationship between former and latter, the latter being either themselves, or other individuals, hence, making them aware of the same.
Influence Of Sociological Imagination
“…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
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