- Wrights Mills “The Promise”
- Wrights Mills “The Promise” focuses on how individuals can identify their current experiences with their historical and social backgrounds. The current personal problems are connected to historical issues. The author’s main point is that sociological imagination helps individuals to acknowledge how historical and social structures affect personal milieu. To support his argument, Mills breaks up his idea into three sections: how society affects an individual’s milieu, what questions to ask oneself, and how individuals and institutions differ from one another.
In the first section, the author highlights a general overview to show the audience the effect of history on individuals. A transition, such as industrialization, renders peasants to workers, and a child lacks a parent when a wife or husband is forced by circumstances to stay alone (Mills 3). The author uses this example to imply that one social class’s rise brings imbalance. He provides additional examples that relate well with industrialization, such as the rise or fall of an investment. In such a case, some people become wealthier, while others become broke. Furthermore, children who grow without parents attribute their problems to a lack of parental care. Therefore, the author breaks this first section to show how social-historical change can affect each individual.
The author’s second section demonstrates the characteristics of the people who already know the sociological imagination’s promise to the audience. These people question their social status in three different ways, namely: the society’s structure, its historical human stand, and its current types of men and women (Mills 7). Such people consider the social system’s critical components and how their interlinking can be altered to bring social change. Furthermore, they attempt to establish a sense of history within the human development framework in society. They also try to create the current meaning of human nature and how it might change. Therefore, the author wants the readers to evaluate themselves and establish if they understand their individual and public positions based on these three questions.
The author’s third section explains to the audience the social and individual scope of social imagination functionality. Personal troubles occur within a limited relational range of milieu with others, while the public issues occur with many milieux that overlap, thus forming an expansive social structure (Mills 8). The problem that occurs on an individual is linked to one’s biographical entity within that particular social setting. Besides, it only involves individuals learning the experiences by themselves through personal encounters. On the contrary, an issue becomes a public matter when various institutions encounter a crisis. Thus, the author shows the distinction between the two entities by the scope of the problem.
Mills uses other authors’ evidence to support his argument. The author cites Comte, Weber, Marx, and Spencer to explain human social life (Mills 22). He explains how human nature’s sociological aspect has evolved since ancient times. Using this evidence, he can explain how history and the present people’s lives are interconnected systematically. Thus, the authors help Mills to explain how sociological imagination’s promise evolved until to date.
In conclusion, Mills’ main point focuses on the role of historical and social changes to individuals. The author’s argument is presented in three major sections: the historical background of human social life, relevant questions one should question, and how to differentiate between individual tribulations and social issues. The author proposes that people can identify the promise of sociological imagination if they incorporate historical and present social problems to understand their current status.
Work Cited
Mills, C. Wright. Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press, 2001.