Sociology Imagined

It is arguable that the choices of the everyday individual are not really choices at all, for in every decision we make, there lays a complex lattice of deterministic factors that have influenced them. These factors undoubtedly include societal and epochal context as well as both a general and personal historical background, whether or not the decision at hand is dealing with a private problem, or a public issue. The sociologist C. Wright Mills lies at the heart of establishing the sociological connection between the personal and private, and it is through his eyes that a modern young adult such as myself may peer to determine the circumstances of my current position at college. This is but one example, as any circumstance and person may be examined through the sociological prism.

In C. Wright Mills' article, The Sociological Imagination, he attempts to explain the meaning behind this title, and subsequently, sow an understanding for the factors involved in social context. His thesis is fairly simple: that human beings find themselves trapped by the confines of their time and place, and that the choices we are offered by our society are limited to certain distinctive parameters. His resolution to this premise, however, is far more complicated. Mills, by presenting us this grim, yet all too relevant premise described in his opening paragraph, is in fact asking us to consider how our lives are defined in sociological terms. In other words, he is presenting to us the main ingredient to the definition for the "sociological imagination". He divides the causes for our permeating sense of social malaise into equal parts of historical and biographical context. This is the larger, more general sense of the dichotomy of Mills' analysis. The smaller component to the dichotomy includes the difference between "private troubles" and "public issues".

In the larger sense, Mills' argues that the tension that people experience when confronted with some kind of change (take, for example, the underlying causes of a revolution, and the years of turbulence which transpire thence) occurs because people by nature are conditioned by the sensual and cognitive experiences gained from their immediate environment, and when the structure of that environment shifts, their understanding of the world becomes rattled and confused. Thus, by dint of historical context and larger social change, individual societies and lives are equally affected, even if these individuals fail to put two and two together. By understanding the relationship between biographical and historical, Mills tells us, we therefore can understand the meaning of the sociological imagination.

In the smaller sense, Mills presents us with the dichotomy of "public issues" and "private troubles". These are the direct extensions of the biographical and the historical. Essentially, these two terms define the tensions of individual people, (private troubles) and the general whole of the society. This is not to be confused with "history and biography", as the former is designated only to the impact of the almost abstract happenings in time-space on a person or group of people. In this case, we are talking about something more easily fathomable, something much more immediate. When Mills describes "private troubles", he is speaking of problems that are uniquely individual, meaning that they primarily affect a single person at a single juncture. Perhaps the problem extends out to the person's immediate circle of friends, family and acquaintances, but does not stretch much further than that. On the other hand, "public issues" describe problems that affect a larger body of people, up to and including the society as a whole. For example, the loss of a job describes a private trouble, as it affects the ex-employee, his employer and his immediate family, and no one else. However, say he lost his job as a result of the company experiencing an economic recession. In that case, the recession affects the society as a whole, and the impact made upon him is but one of many made upon others. Mills then argues that the public and private fare are basically inseparable, as even the most minute happenstance contains within it a whole host of social, cultural and historical circumstances which begat it.

On the matter of my own role in the scheme of things, I will attempt to successfully analyze the reasons for my current attendance of college. In the larger sense, (i.e., historically), the society in which I was born and in which I live dates back to certain Western European kingdoms, mainly that of France and the British Isles. The cultural tradition brought over to this New World by the colonists was that of a patriarchal, pioneer spirit. This was a spirit that was devout and hard-working, conditioned by the newness of these people's surroundings and the mores of the monarchical Christendom to which they were accustomed. Education had its place in the church, and a woman like me would most likely end her education at a much younger age then I currently am in order to raise a home. After centuries of shifting power in Europe and abroad, the Industrial Revolution (particularly the influx of peasants into the city, who would thence work commercially in order to buy commodities), war, suffrage and civil rights movements, and a secularization of western society, college would eventually become a standard step to getting a job that provided a livable income. Biographically, I was born into a suburb of a large metropolis that virtually demands a diploma from its citizens in order to function commercially. Being a middle class female from modern society, the pressure is on me to study in order to win my bread, as opposed to work the land or live off of inherited wealth. The pressure that my family and my circumstances place on me to educate myself are more or less parallel to most young adults in my position, who, like me, do not feel that they have the proper means to safely travel, marry, work or idle without severely hurting their future success in this society. As a result, we choose a "program" pertaining to a subject they would prefer most to work with professionally. For all these reasons, historical and biographical, public and private, I have chosen the route of my life only by a certain few parameters, and so has everyone else.