Part 1: What is the Sociological Imagination? Why is it important to sociology? Be very specific and use references/page numbers from the reading.

the reading is copied down

V
plzz no plagiarism it will be checked
Part 2: Apply the Sociological Imagination to everyday life by choosing one or more major social issues found in either a personal experience, a novel you’ve read, a movie you’ve seen, or the recent news. Describe how the authors presented the issue/issues. Explain how the authors could have utilized the Imaginaion. Be very specific

1
SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION
T
he sociological imagination shows us how
to analyze individual troubles in terms of the
consequence of the dynamics of wider
society, such as politics, geography,
economics, historical racism, scapegoating,
profiling, gender
inequality and
socioeconomic status (to name a few).
Using the sociological imagination avoids
blaming individuals for personal problems
like being lazy or refusing to work that really
can be applied to the greater social structure
as social problems. Pov
erty, for example, is a
personal problem only because individuals
are blamed and expected to get themselves
out of poverty. Most sociologists see poverty
as a result of jobless areas (like the inner
cities) or reserve labor consequent of
capitalism; discri
mination regarding race,
gender, and sexual preference (lower pay for
equal jobs); lack of resources for people who
are mentally challenged or victims of abuse
(such as the majority of the homeless); and
2
the failure of a capitalist system to
appropriate ta
x monies in a more egalitarian
way to maintain jobs for the people.
Sociologists look at
what we generally
consider to be
personal issues
(poverty,
divorce, homelessness)
as social problems
–
problems we can address as a society instead
of blaming individ
uals for disadvantages and
hardships
. Read the article I provided in
Module I written by CW Mills
–
that’s where
sociology gets its root philosophy.

———————————–
1
INTRODUCTION TO FAMILY ISSUES
TERMS:
Family
Social Change
Social Control Mechanisms
Empowerment
Social Movements
Ideology
I.
Family
a
s defined by Gittens
:
A.
T
wo or more persons related by birth, marriage,
adoption who
reside
together. All families f
orm
households by this definition, though not all households
are families
B.
Family defined by
US Census: A family is a group of
two people or more (one of whom is the householder
or
head of household
) related by birth, marriage, or
adoption and residing
together; all such people
(including related subfamily members) are considered
as members of one family. Beginning with the 1980
Current Population Survey, unrelated subfamilies
(referred to in the past as secondary families) are no
longer included in the
count of families, nor are the
members of unrelated subfamilies included in the count
of family members. The number of families is equal to
the number of family households; however, the count of
family members differs from the count of family
2
household me
mbers because family household
members include any non
–
relatives living in the
household.
Who is left out?
1
. The
historical
U.S. Supreme Court case of 1976 in
which Mrs. Inez Moore was almost evicted from her
home because she had two sets of grandchild
ren in her
dwelling, due to codes described by Coontz where state
institutions “tried to impose nuclear family norms on
low
–
income families, as when zoning and building laws
were used to prohibit the co
–
residence of augmented or
extended families or childr
en were taken away from
single parents”
2
. Step parents find that taking responsibility for raising
children cannot ensure their rights or compete with
legal definitions that emphasize biology in custody
cases; nonresidential, uninvolved and non
–
supporti
ng
parent has say that the supp
orting involved parent does
not
3
. The Census Bureau’s count of families determine
policy yet can exclude family relations that are
significant to people themselves, such as same
–
sex
partners or clan relations.
I
I.
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT TO LEARN IN A SOCIOLOGY
3
CLASS
ABOUT
FAMILY ISSUES AND SOCIAL CHANGE?
A. What makes a topic a “family issue” or “family
problem”?
1. Consensus or
o
ngoing d
ebate in society about
whether families are being harmed o
r undermined
a.
Prohibition during the early 20th c
historically
b
. Divorce or Gay Marriage currently
2.
RECAP:
C. Wright Mills distinguishes between
personal troubles and public issues. Troubles “occur
within the character of the individual and within
the
range of his [or her] immediate relations with others;
they have to do with the self and with those limited
areas of social life of which he [or she] is directly and
personally aware…[It is fundamentally a private matter
”
(Mills
). Public issues, on
the other hand, “transcend the
local environments of the individual and range of inner
life. They have to do with the organization of many
milieus
into institutions of a historical society as a
whole…”(Mills
)
Mills argues that most seemingly personal
troubles such
as illness, divorce, unemployment and so on are tied to
larger social, economic and historical forces. The
quality of mind which can bridge personal troubles (or
joys) and public issues is what he called the “sociological
imagination
”
4
B.
What is Social Change?
Social change is: “fundamental alternations in the
patterns of culture, structure, and social behavior over
time” (Ore 1999
:
547)
1
.
Can be positive or negative: issues like abortion
vary
over social influence
, because
it
had bee
n legal 100
years before Roe v Wade in 1974; and it could change
again. Clearly social change reflects point of view as
well as different experiences and backgrounds.
2
.
Inducements
to change
Whether the cause
s
of discontent are individual
experiences
of oppression

or that expectations are
greater than the society fulfills [the idea that some of
you are paying for your educ
ation
and some are not
or
cannot
]; or feeling invisible and ignored in
a society
–
because you are not on the media’s radar scheme or the
politician’s agenda. The motivation to change can be
overwhelming.
Yet, there are a variety of avenues
to seek change and
empowerment
–
or
a process of defining ourselves
rather than bei
ng defined by others
C
. Still, since families organize our lives as individuals in
terms of our identities, through our social
5
interactions/relationships, and through social
institutions, these are also the varying levels at which
social change can happe
n:
1
.
On
an
individual/internal level:
Reflecting on your background, standing back and
thinking about how your experience might have been
different had you been raised in a different family. How
would your life have been different? Much of how we
ana
lyze issues and situations is a function of our
personal and familial background.
U
pon adulthood we can begin to change: seeing with
whom and how you associate with other people? What
has astounded you or astonished you about others in
recent years?
Do you assume others’ experiences are
odd? Or, that it derives from your
limited or perhaps
‘sheltered’ experience?
2
.
On interactive/interpersonal level:
This level refers to everything from how we treat
through behaviors and responsibilities our pa
rtners,
parents, children
–
whether we feel obligated to take our
aunt to the doctor or whether verbal or physical
violence is acceptable; social control mechanisms, tools
for rewarding conformity
and
punishing or discouraging
nonconformity operate at a
ll le
vels, yet visible here. In
other words,
to families, and if we are willing to
challenge discriminatory treatment
–
such as rejection
6
of a gay family member or favoring boys
—
or how we
respond to pairing across race
–
ethnicity and religion.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE 1:
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
Lecture:
Race and Ethnic Relations
: Institutions
I.
Five institutions that societies share:
Politics
Economics
Education
Religion
Family
II.
Richard Schaefer suggests another institution should
be added:
Media
A.
Political institutions are organizations which create,
enforce, and apply laws; that mediate conflict; make
(governmental) policy on the economy and social
systems; and otherwise provide representation for the
populous.
a.
Sociology
adds: politics refers
to the organizing of
social power in a community (
that affect personal
relationships
to global politics)
B.
Economic institutions are networks of commerce
(producers, manufacturers,
distributors,
etc.)
that
generate a
nd distribute goods and service
s
a.
Sociology adds:
economic activity is the primary
focus of social life
influenced by greater social
forces (recession for example)
2
C.
Education
is
a social institution that includes teaching
formal knowledge such as reading, writing, and
arithmetic
–
as well as morals, values, ethics
, and
socially acceptable behavior
(norms)
.
a.
Sociology adds:
since education prepares young
people for entry into society it is a form of
socialization.
This
form of socialization affect
s
and
is affected by other social st
ructures
(politics,
economy, family, etc.)
D.
Religion
as a social institution
:
is the set of beliefs and
practices regarding sacred and profane
ideas
that help
a society understand the meaning and purpose of life.
a.
Sociology adds:
religion is another form
of
socialization with rewards and punishments (
as
with
other institutions) to validate its viability
and
sometimes
negate the validity of others
E.
Family
–
there are many definitions and sociological
explanations of family
–
one simple contemporary
definition
includes
two or more people who share a
household
that usually includes one or more children
;
what’s more important is how we define family that
suggests particular social norms
and acceptable
behavior
a.
Macro
–
sociological explanations relate family
structure to types of economy (agrarian,
industrial, service)
b.
Micro
–
sociological explanations relate family to
everyday interactions including power relations
3
F.
Media:
behavioral scientist Art Silverblatt
describes
media in the following manner:
a.
Mass media have emerged as a social institution
–
assuming
many of the functions
that were
formerly served by traditional social institutions
such as the church, school, government, and
family. However, in Western countries operating
on the private
–
ownership model (most notably
the US), media systems were never intended to
serve as a social inst
itution.
Instead, the primary objective of a privately
owned media organization is to make a profit for
the company. Thus, many films, television
programs, and
websites
contain sexual and
violent content designed to attract the largest
imaginable audienc
e. The messages contained in
these programs can be confusing or disruptive to
a public looking to the media for direction,
purpose, and meaning.
The public’s reliance on the Western media for
guidance and support can therefore be
dangerous. Within this c
ontext, media literacy
provides strategies that enable people to critically
examine media messages and put media
programming into meaningful perspective

The Sociological Imagination
Chapter One: The Promise
C. Wright Mills (1959)
Nowadays people often feel that their private lives are a series of traps. They sense that within
their everyday worlds, they cannot overcome their troubles, and in this feeling,
they are often
quite correct. What ordinary people are directly aware of and what they try to do are bounded by
the private orbits in which they live; their visions and their powers are limited to the close
–
up
scenes of job, family, neighborhood; in other
milieux, they move vicariously and remain
spectators. And the more aware they become, however vaguely, of ambitions and of threats
which transcend their immediate locales, the more trapped they seem to feel.
Underlying this sense of being trapped are seemi
ngly impersonal changes in the very structure of
continent
–
wide societies. The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success and
the failure of individual men and women. When a society is industrialized, a peasant becomes a
worker; a feuda
l lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman. When classes rise or fall, a person
is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a person takes new
heart or goes broke. When wars happen, an insurance salesperson becomes a rocket l
auncher; a
store clerk, a radar operator; a wife or husband lives alone; a child grows up without a parent.
Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without
understanding both.
Yet people do not usually define the tr
oubles they endure in terms of historical change and
institutional contradiction. The well
–
being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups
and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate connection between
the patte
rns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary people do not usually
know what this connection means for the kinds of people they are becoming and for the kinds of
history
–
making in which they might take part. They do not possess the qual
ity of mind essential
to grasp the interplay of individuals and society, of biography and history, of self and world.
They cannot cope with their personal troubles in such ways as to control the structural
transformations that usually lie behind them.
Sure
ly it is no wonder. In what period have so many people been so totally exposed at so fast a
pace to such earthquakes of change? That Americans have not known such catastrophic changes
as have the men and women of other societies is due to historical facts
that are now quickly
becoming ‘merely history.’ The history that now affects every individual is world history. Within
this scene and this period, in the course of a single generation, one sixth of humankind is
transformed from all that is feudal and backw
ard into all that is modern, advanced, and fearful.
Political colonies are freed; new and less visible forms of imperialism installed. Revolutions
occur; people feel the intimate grip of new kinds of authority. Totalitarian societies rise, and are
smashed
to bits
–
or succeed fabulously. After two centuries of ascendancy, capitalism is shown
up as only one way to make society into an industrial apparatus. After two centuries of hope,
even formal democracy is restricted to a quite small portion of mankind. E
verywhere in the
underdeveloped world, ancient ways of life are broken up and vague expectations become urgent
demands. Everywhere in the overdeveloped world, the means of authority and of violence
become total in scope and bureaucratic in form. Humanity i
tself now lies before us, the super
–
nation at either pole concentrating its most coordinated and massive efforts upon the preparation
of World War Three.
The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of people to orient themselves in
accordance with
cherished values. And which values? Even when they do not panic, people often
sense that older ways of feeling and thinking have collapsed and that newer beginnings are
ambiguous to the point of moral stasis. Is it any wonder that ordinary people feel the
y cannot
cope with the larger worlds with which they are so suddenly confronted? That they cannot
understand the meaning of their epoch for their own lives? That
–
in defense of selfhood
–
they
become morally insensible, trying to remain altogether private
individuals? Is it any wonder that
they come to be possessed by a sense of the trap?
It is not only information that they need
–
in this Age of Fact, information often dominates their
attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it. It is not o
nly the skills of reason that
they need
–
although their struggles to acquire these often exhaust their limited moral energy.
What they need, and what they feel they need, is 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 happening within themselves. It is this quality, I am going to
contend, that journalists and scholars, artists and publics, scientists and editors are coming to
expect o
f what may be called the sociological imagination.
1
The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in
terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. It
enables him
to take into account how individuals, in the welter of their daily experience, often
become falsely conscious of their social positions. Within that welter, the framework of modern
society is sought, and within that framework the psychologies of a variety
of men and women are
formulated. By such means the personal uneasiness of individuals is focused upon explicit
troubles and the indifference of publics is transformed into involvement with public issues.
The first fruit of this imagination
–
and the first
lesson of the social science that embodies it
–
is
the idea that the individual can understand her own experience and gauge her own fate only by
locating herself within her period, that she can know her own chances in life only by becoming
aware of those
of all individuals in her circumstances. In many ways it is a terrible lesson; in
many ways a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of humans capacities for supreme
effort or willing degradation, for agony or glee, for pleasurable brutality or the swe
etness of
reason. But in our time we have come to know that the limits of ‘human nature’ are frighteningly
broad. We have come to know that every individual lives, from one generation to the next, in
some society; that he lives out a biography, and lives i
t out within some historical sequence. By
the fact of this living, he contributes, however minutely, to the shaping of this society and to the
course of its history, even as he is made by society and by its historical push and shove.
The sociological imagi
nation enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between
the two within society. That is its task and its promise. To recognize this task and this promise is
the mark of the classic social analyst. It is characteristic of Herbert Spencer
–
turgid, polysyllabic,
comprehensive; of E. A. Ross
–
graceful, muckraking, upright; of Auguste Comte and Emile
Durkheim; of the intricate and subtle Karl Mannheim. It is the quality of all that is intellectually
excellent in Karl Marx; it is the clue to
Thorstein Veblen’s brilliant and ironic insight, to Joseph
Schumpeter’s many
–
sided constructions of reality; it is the basis of the psychological sweep of
W. E. H. Lecky no less than of the profundity and clarity of Max Weber. And it is the signal of
what
is best in contemporary studies of people and society.
No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their
intersections within a society has completed its intellectual journey. Whatever the specific
problems of th
e classic social analysts, however limited or however broad the features of social
reality they have examined, those who have been imaginatively aware of the promise of their
work have consistently asked three sorts of questions:
(1) What is the structure
of this particular society as a whole? What are its essential components,
and how are they related to one another? How does it differ from other varieties of social order?
Within it, what is the meaning of any particular feature for its continuance and for
its change?
(2) Where does this society stand in human history? What are the mechanics by which it is
changing? What is its place within and its meaning for the development of humanity as a whole?
How does any particular feature we are examining affect, a
nd how is it affected by, the historical
period in which it moves? And this period
–
what are its essential features? How does it differ
from other periods? What are its characteristic ways of history
–
making?
(3) What varieties of men and women now prevail
in this society and in this period? And what
varieties are coming to prevail? In what ways are they selected and formed, liberated and
repressed, made sensitive and blunted? What kinds of `human nature’ are revealed in the conduct
and character we observe
in this society in this period? And what is the meaning for ‘human
nature’ of each and every feature of the society we are examining?
Whether the point of interest is a great power state or a minor literary mood, a family, a prison, a
creed
–
these are th
e kinds of questions the best social analysts have asked. They are the
intellectual pivots of classic studies of individuals in society
–
and they are the questions
inevitably raised by any mind possessing the sociological imagination. For that imagination
is
the capacity to shift from one perspective to another
–
from the political to the psychological;
from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the
world; from the theological school to the military establishme
nt; from considerations of an oil
industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal
and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self
–
and to see the
relations between the two. Back o
f its use there is always the urge to know the social and
historical meaning of the individual in the society and in the period in which she has her quality
and her being.
That, in brief, is why it is by means of the sociological imagination that men and w
omen now
hope to grasp what is going on in the world, and to understand what is happening in themselves
as minute points of the intersections of biography and history within society. In large part,
contemporary humanity’s self
–
conscious view of itself as a
t least an outsider, if not a permanent
stranger, rests upon an absorbed realization of social relativity and of the transformative power
of history. The sociological imagination is the most fruitful form of this self
–
consciousness. By
its use people whose
mentalities have swept only a series of limited orbits often come to feel as if
suddenly awakened in a house with which they had only supposed themselves to be familiar.
Correctly or incorrectly, they often come to feel that they can now provide themselve
s with
adequate summations, cohesive assessments, comprehensive orientations. Older decisions that
once appeared sound now seem to them products of a mind unaccountably dense. Their capacity
for astonishment is made lively again. They acquire a new way of
thinking, they experience a
transvaluation of values: in a word, by their reflection and by their sensibility, they realize the
cultural meaning of the social sciences.
2
Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works i
s between
‘the personal troubles of milieu’ and ‘the public issues of social structure.’ This distinction is an
essential tool of the sociological imagination and a feature of all classic work in social science.
Troubles occur within the character of the i
ndividual and within the range of his or her
immediate relations with others; they have to do with one’s self and with those limited areas of
social life of which one is directly and personally aware. Accordingly, the statement and the
resolution of troubl
es properly lie within the individual as a biographical entity and within the
scope of one’s immediate milieu
–
the social setting that is directly open to her personal
experience and to some extent her willful activity. A trouble is a private matter: valu
es cherished
by an individual are felt by her to be threatened.
Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the
range of her inner life. They have to do with the organization of many such milieu into the
ins
titutions of an historical society as a whole, with the ways in which various milieux overlap
and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of social and historical life. An issue is a public
matter: some value cherished by publics is felt to be threaten
ed. Often there is a debate about
what that value really is and about what it is that really threatens it. This debate is often without
focus if only because it is the very nature of an issue, unlike even widespread trouble, that it
cannot very well be def
ined in terms of the immediate and everyday environments of ordinary
people. An issue, in fact, often involves a crisis in institutional arrangements, and often too it
involves what Marxists call ‘contradictions’ or ‘antagonisms.’
In these terms, consider
unemployment. When, in a city of 100,000, only one is unemployed,
that is his personal trouble, and for its relief we properly look to the character of the individual,
his skills and his immediate opportunities. But when in a nation of 50 million employees
, 15
million people are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its solution within
the range of opportunities open to any one individual. The very structure of opportunities has
collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and th
e range of possible solutions require
us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal
situation and character of a scatter of individuals.
Consider war. The personal problem of war, when it occurs, may be
how to survive it or how to
die in it with honor; how to make money out of it; how to climb into the higher safety of the
military apparatus; or how to contribute to the war’s termination. In short, according to one’s
values, to find a set of milieux and w
ithin it to survive the war or make one’s death in it
meaningful. But the structural issues of war have to do with its causes; with what types of people
it throws up into command; with its effects upon economic and political, family and religious
instituti
ons, with the unorganized irresponsibility of a world of nation
–
states.
Consider marriage. Inside a marriage a man and a woman may experience personal troubles, but
when the divorce rate during the first four years of marriage is 250 out of every 1,000 att
empts,
this is an indication of a structural issue having to do with the institutions of marriage and the
family and other institutions that bear upon them.
Or consider the metropolis
–
the horrible, beautiful, ugly, magnificent sprawl of the great city.
F
or many members of the upperclass the personal solution to ‘the problem of the city’ is to have
an apartment with private garage under it in the heart of the city and forty miles out, a house by
Henry Hill, garden by Garrett Eckbo, on a hundred acres of pr
ivate land. In these two controlled
environments
–
with a small staff at each end and a private helicopter connection
–
most people
could solve many of the problems of personal milieux caused by the facts of the city. But all this,
however splendid, does n
ot solve the public issues that the structural fact of the city poses. What
should be done with this wonderful monstrosity? Break it all up into scattered units, combining
residence and work? Refurbish it as it stands? Or, after evacuation, dynamite it and
build new
cities according to new plans in new places? What should those plans be? And who is to decide
and to accomplish whatever choice is made? These are structural issues; to confront them and to
solve them requires us to consider political and econom
ic issues that affect innumerable milieux.
In so far as an economy is so arranged that slumps occur, the problem of unemployment
becomes incapable of personal solution. In so far as war is inherent in the nation
–
state system
and in the uneven industrializa
tion of the world, the ordinary individual in her restricted milieu
will be powerless
–
with or without psychiatric aid
–
to solve the troubles this system or lack of
system imposes upon him. In so far as the family as an institution turns women into darli
ng little
slaves and men into their chief providers and unweaned dependents, the problem of a satisfactory
marriage remains incapable of purely private solution. In so far as the overdeveloped
megalopolis and the overdeveloped automobile are built
–
in featu
res of the overdeveloped
society, the issues of urban living will not be solved by personal ingenuity and private wealth.
What we experience in various and specific milieux, I have noted, is often caused by structural
changes. Accordingly, to understand th
e changes of many personal milieux we are required to
look beyond them. And the number and variety of such structural changes increase as the
institutions within which we live become more embracing and more intricately connected with
one another. To be awa
re of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility is to be
capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieux. To be able to do that is to
possess the sociological imagination.
3
What are the major issues for publics and the
key troubles of private individuals in our time? To
formulate issues and troubles, we must ask what values are cherished yet threatened, and what
values are cherished and supported, by the characterizing trends of our period. In the case both of
threat and
of support we must ask what salient contradictions of structure may be involved.
When people cherish some set of values and do not feel any threat to them, they experience well
–
being. When they cherish values but do feel them to be threatened, they experi
ence a crisis
–
either as a personal trouble or as a public issue. And if all their values seem involved, they feel
the total threat of panic.
But suppose people are neither aware of any cherished values nor experience any threat? That is
the experience of
indifference, which, if it seems to involve all their values, becomes apathy.
Suppose, finally, they are unaware of any cherished values, but still are very much aware of a
threat? That is the experience of uneasiness, of anxiety, which, if it is total en
ough, becomes a
deadly unspecified malaise.
Ours is a time of uneasiness and indifference
–
not yet formulated in such ways as to permit the
work of reason and the play of sensibility. Instead of troubles
–
defined in terms of values and
threats
–
there is
often the misery of vague uneasiness; instead of explicit issues there is often
merely the beat feeling that all is somehow not right. Neither the values threatened nor whatever
threatens them has been stated; in short, they have not been carried to the p
oint of decision.
Much less have they been formulated as problems of social science.
In the thirties there was little doubt
–
except among certain deluded business circles that there
was an economic issue which was also a pack of personal troubles. In thes
e arguments about ‘the
crisis of capitalism,’ the formulations of Marx and the many unacknowledged reformulations of
his work probably set the leading terms of the issue, and some people came to understand their
personal troubles in these terms. The values
threatened were plain to see and cherished by all, the
structural contradictions that threatened them also seemed plain. Both were widely and deeply
experienced. It was a political age.
But the values threatened in the era after World War Two are often ne
ither widely acknowledged
as values nor widely felt to be threatened. Much private uneasiness goes unformulated; much
public malaise and many decisions of enormous structural relevance never become public issues.
For those who accept such inherited values
as reason and freedom, it is the uneasiness itself that
is the trouble; it is the indifference itself that is the issue. And it is this condition, of uneasiness
and indifference, that is the signal feature of our period.
All this is so striking that it is
often interpreted by observers as a shift in the very kinds of
problems that need now to be formulated. We are frequently told that the problems of our
decade, or even the crises of our period, have shifted from the external realm of economics and
now have
to do with the quality of individual life
–
in fact with the question of whether there is
soon going to be anything that can properly be called individual life. Not child labor but comic
books, not poverty but mass leisure, are at the center of concern. M
any great public issues as
well as many private troubles are described in terms of ‘the psychiatric’
–
often, it seems, in a
pathetic attempt to avoid the large issues and problems of modern society. Often this statement
seems to rest upon a provincial nar
rowing of interest to the Western societies, or even to the
United States
–
thus ignoring two
–
thirds of mankind; often, too, it arbitrarily divorces the
individual life from the larger institutions within which that life is enacted, and which on
occasion b
ear upon it more grievously than do the intimate environments of childhood.
Problems of leisure, for example, cannot even be stated without considering problems of work.
Family troubles over comic books cannot be formulated as problems without considering
the
plight of the contemporary family in its new relations with the newer institutions of the social
structure. Neither leisure nor its debilitating uses can be understood as problems without
recognition of the extent to which malaise and indifference now
form the social and personal
climate of contemporary American society. In this climate, no problems of ‘the private life’ can
be stated and solved without recognition of the crisis of ambition that is part of the very career of
people at work in the incorp
orated economy.
It is true, as psychoanalysts continually point out, that people do often have ‘the increasing sense
of being moved by obscure forces within themselves which they are unable to define.’ But it is
not true, as Ernest Jones asserted, that ‘ma
n’s [SIC] chief enemy and danger is his [SIC] own
unruly nature and the dark forces pent up within him [SIC].’ On the contrary: ‘man’s chief danger’
today lies in the unruly forces of contemporary society itself, with its alienating methods of
production,
its enveloping techniques of political domination, its international anarchy
–
in a
word, its pervasive transformations of the very ‘nature’ of human beings and the conditions and
aims of their life.
It is now the social scientist’s foremost political and
intellectual task
–
for here the two coincide
–
to make clear the elements of contemporary uneasiness and indifference. It is the central demand
made upon her by other cultural workers
–
by physical scientists and artists, by the intellectual
community in
general. It is because of this task and these demands, I believe, that the social
sciences are becoming the common denominator of our cultural period, and the sociological
imagination our most needed quality of mind.