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Sociological Imagination In C. Wright Mills's The Promise

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Nelithza Montizo Sociology 101 9/13/2014 The Promise What is sociological information? C. Wright Mills defines sociological imagination as: “a quality of mind that will help them use information and 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: 3) Mills also says that this also helps a certain individual understand more of the inner meaning of life and or external career. (Mills 1959: 3) By all this, I believe that what Mills means to tell us and believes about sociological imagination is that it is something more than a state of mind that someone has to reach a coherent thought about what is truly going on in today’s world. He says that Social Imagination gives us an opportunity to understand what society’s relationship with history is. C. Wright Mills’ intention is to hype us up so that we would not only be expectant of our own creativity but to use it as well. What is the difference between personal troubles and public issues? A personal trouble is one that you and I personally struggle with. It is something between the individual themselves as to a public issue is when more than one person is dealing with the …show more content…

Wright Mills’ chapter The Promise, he discusses what sociological imagination is along with what personal troubles and public issues are. I personally liked the outlook he had on these things because it does make sense. The way that he had me understand the actual difference between a person trouble and a public issue was pretty straightforward. In some parts however, I wish he would have worded things in a different way not because the words themselves were complicated to understand but because I would get confused and have to reread the sentence again and try to understand what he meant by that. Mills made me realize that I cannot simply understand either society’s history or an individual because I have to understand both to truly get

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