SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

What Are Benefits to Developing Sociological Imagination(C Wright Mills)

What Are Benefits to Developing Sociological Imagination(C Wright Mills)

The prevailing definition of a sociological imagination is "the ability to grasp the relationship between our lives as individuals and the larger social forces that help to shape them". Nevertheless, Mills's (1959) original concept draws a distinction between sociologists with a sociological imagination and "mere technicians" who are trained in a field but not encouraged to think creatively (Wright 1955 p. 211). For Mills, technicians think narrowly and specifically-the antithesis of a sociological imagination. Cultivating a sociological imagination requires a tolerance for ambiguity, what Mills called "vague images and notions" that must be worked out (Wright, 1955 p. 212). Uncertainty and confusion, argued Mills, are the conditions from which original ideas are likely to emerge. Mills' view, in essence, concurs with the earlier discussion regarding disequilibruim and doubt

Mills outlined a number of steps that "release" the imagination he envisioned. Among them are the following, each of which is paired with an aspect of cognitive mapping: Mix up and re-sort disconnected themes and concepts. Mills encouraged sociologists to "dump out heretofore disconnected folders" and re-sort them, searching for possible connections that had previously been overlooked (Wright 1959:212). (When Mills wrote this, "folder" referred to a manila folder, not computer folders that hold electronic documents.) Similar to Mills's dumping process, cognitive mapping assignments require students to arrange 20 to 25 seemingly unrelated pieces into a map that illustrates a specified sociological approach. The mixing and sorting of concepts and names challenges students to consider feasible relationships. Classifying concepts and perceiving the relationships among them is the hallmark of thinking creatively.

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 their own experience ...