Published on April 29th, 20133
The Sociological Imagination: Thinking Outside the Box
By Joachim Vogt Isaksen
“Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.” C. Wright Mills.
Are you aware of how your personal situation is linked to the forces of history and the society you live in? The sociological imagination is a concept used by the American sociologist C. Wright Mills to describe the ability to “think yourself away from the familiar routines of everyday life” and look at them from an entirely new perspective. In order to develop such skills, you must be able to free yourself from one context and look at things from an alternative point of view.
Imagine that you were born 500 years ago, in the year 1500. You would most likely be living in a completely different world, under totally different conditions. You would probably be living in a small community with strong collective bonds between the members of society, without the opportunities of modern technology, travelling, shopping etc. – in other words, a situation that would be radically different from the one you experience today.
You could also imagine that you were a child living in Indonesia today. There would be a great chance that you were forced to work as a child labourer at a fish factory. The tasks involved would include catching, sorting and boiling fish. During the twelve-hour workday you would have to haul gigantic nets in the boat under very poor working conditions.
Mills thought that sociology can show us that society – not our own foibles and failings – is responsible for many of our problems. He argued that one of the main tasks of sociology was to transform personal problems into public and political issues. Mills defined sociological imagination as “the vivid awareness of the relationship between experience and the wider society.”
Seemingly impersonal and remote historical forces may be linked to incidents taking place in an individual’s life. This implies that people may look at their own personal problems as social issues and connect their own individual experiences with the workings of society. The sociological imagination enables people to distinguish between personal troubles and public issues. For example, women who live under repression, or people who suffer from poverty, might link their personal conditions to the social forces that are relevant to the society they live in. Mills recommended that social scientists should work within the field as a whole, rather than specializing heavily on one area of social science, such as sociology, political science, economics or psychology. This idea is often ignored in social science.
How is personal choice shaped by context?
Mills’ main point is that many of the problems people are faced with in society have social roots and are shared by many others. These roots are often related to the structure of the society and the changes happening within it. Hence, it is important that sociologists, and other social scientists, demonstrate why these problems have sociological causes, enabling the individual to understand how his or her biography is linked to the structure and history of society. This may hopefully help empowering individuals to transform personal unease into public issues in order to facilitate social change.
So how can we use Mills’ insights more practically? The lack of the ability to find a job, pay the mortgage, pay the rent, etc., is by individuals often seen as the result of personal weakness, created by a person’s own errors. People therefore search for causes within themselves, internalizing the problem. However, it is highly unlikely that the various thoughts, feelings and ideas you may have had, and situations encountered in your life, are completely unique. At one time or another they have all probably been experienced by others.
Unemployment can be an extremely negative private experience, and feelings of personal failure are common when one loses a job. But when the employment rate reaches up to 30 percent, as it has in several European countries today, it cannot be seen as the result of a character flaw or weakness. When many people in society face the same problem, one must rather ask whether there is something within the structure of society that is contributing to this problem. In many countries today, unemployment may be explained by the public issue of economic downturn, caused by the subprime mortgage industry. In other words, it may rather be defined as a social problem than of one stemming from personal shortcomings.
It is important to point out that the idea of the sociological imagination should not be used as an excuse for an individual not to try harder to achieve success in life. Some people would misuse this idea as a way of running away from personal responsibility. However, in many situations a person may fail even if he tries to do everything right, like working hard, getting an education and trying to get a job.
When many people in society lack the ability to achieve success, it is important to identify the roots of the structure, such as inefficient political solutions, discrimination of certain groups and the exploitation of the labour force. Since problems like these cannot be solved by the individual alone, it is important that we use our sociological imagination and apply it in our daily lives, enabling us to change our personal situation and ultimately create a better society.
Mills, C. Wright, 2000. The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press.
*Cover photo by Walter Smith, bubble photo by Hartwig HKD, photo of painting by Martin Beek