Sociological imagination book pdf

Sociological Imagination. How can we restore fundamental values on a political and cultural level? Taking this question as a starting point, the book identifies the notion of sociological imagination as a suitable method to address the widespread disorientation within the human and social sciences.

In particular, the three essays included in this. College and Society. A brief book that uses examples from a college or university setting to illustrate society in terms of social groups and forces.

Rather, the author argues that colleges. Die Machtelite. I also believe that there are now great obstacles in the way of this tradition's continuing—both within the social sciences and in their academic and political settings— but that nevertheless the qualities of mind that constitute it are becoming a common denominator of our general cultural life and that, however vaguely and in however a confusing variety of disguises, they are coming to be felt as a need.

Many practitioners of social science, especially in America, seem to me curiously reluctant to take up the challenge that now confronts them. Many in fact abdicate the intellectual and the political tasks of social analysis; others no doubt are simply not up to the role for which they are nevertheless being cast. Yet despite this reluctance, intellectual as well as public attention is now so obviously upon the social worlds which they presumably study that it must be agreed that they are uniquely confronted with an opportunity.

In this opportunity there is revealed the intellectual promise of the social sciences, the cultural uses of the sociological imagination, and the political meaning of studies of man and society. Whatever may be true in such disciplines as political science and economics, history and anthropology, it is evident that in the United States today what is known as sociology has become the center of reflection about social science. To interpret this variety as A Tradition is in itself audacious.

Yet perhaps it will be generally agreed that what is now recognized as sociological work has tended to move in one or more of three general directions, each of which is subject to distortion, to being run into the ground. Tendency I: Toward a theory of history. For example, in the hands of Comte, as in those of Marx, Spencer, and Weber, sociology is an encyclopedic endeavor, concerned with the whole of man's social life. It is at once historical and systematic—historical, because it deals with and uses the materials of the past; systematic, because it does so in order to discern 'the stages' of the course of history and the regularities of social life.

The theory of man's history can all too readily become distorted into a trans-historical strait-jacket into which the materials of THE PROMISE 23 human history are forced and out of which issue prophetic views usually gloomy ones of the future. The works of Arnold Toynbee and of Oswald Spengler are well-known examples.

It is, in short, concerned with a rather static and abstract view of the components of social structure on a quite high level of generality. Perhaps in reaction to the distortion of Tendency I, history can be altogether abandoned: the systematic theory of the nature of man and of society all too readily becomes an elaborate and arid formalism in which the splitting of Concepts and their endless rearrangement becomes the central endeavor.

Among what I shall call Grand Theorists, conceptions have indeed become Concepts. The work of Talcott Parsons is the leading contemporary example in American sociology. Tendency III: Toward empirical studies of contemporary social facts and problems. Although Comte and Spencer were mainstays of American social science until or thereabout, and German theoretical influence was heavy, the empirical survey became central in the United States at an early time.

In part this resulted from the prior academic establishment of economics and political science. Given this, in so far as sociology is defined as a study of some special area of society, it readily becomes a sort of odd job man among the social sciences, consisting of miscellaneous studies of academic leftovers. Many course offerings in American sociology illustrate this; perhaps textbooks in the field of social disorganization reVeal it best. Lazarsfeld are present-day examples.

These tendencies—to scatter one's attention and to cultivate method for its own sake—are fit companions, although they do not necessarily occur together. The peculiarities of sociology may be understood as distortions of one or more of its traditional tendencies. But its promises may also be understood in terms of these tendencies. In the United States today there has come about a sort of Hellenistic amalgamation, embodying various elements and aims from the sociologies of the several Western societies.

But there is also an opportunity in our condition: the sociological tradition contains the best statements of the full promise of the social sciences as a whole, as well as some partial fulfillments of it.

The nuance and suggestion that students of sociology can find in their traditions are not to be briefly summarized, but any social scientist who takes them in hand will be richly rewarded.

His mastery of them may readily be turned into new orientations for his own work in social science. I shall return to the promises of social science in chapters Seven through Ten , after an examination of some of its more habitual distortions chapters Two through Six.

An element of a shared symbolic system which serves as a criterion or standard for selection among the alternatives of orientation which are intrinsically open in a situation may be called a value.

But from this motivational orientation aspect of the totality, of action it is, in view of the role of symbolic systems, necessary to distinguish a Valueorientation' aspect. This aspect concerns, not the meaning of the expected state of affairs to the actor in terms of his gratification-deprivation balance but the content of the selective standards themselves.

The concept of value-orientations in this sense is thus the logical device for formulating one central aspect of the articulation of cultural traditions into the action system. It follows from the derivation of normative orientation and the role of values in action as stated above, that all values involve what may be called a social reference Expectations then, in combination with the 'double contingency' of the process of interaction as it has been called, create a crucially imperative problem of order.

Two aspects of this problem of order may in turn be distinguished, order in the symbolic systems which make communication possible, and order in the mutuality of motivational orientation to the normative aspect of expectations, the 'Hobbesian' problem of order. These standards are, in the terms used in the preceding chapter, patterns of value-orientation, and as such are a particularly crucial part of the cultural tradition of the social system.

Grand Theory —the associating and dissociating of concepts—is well worth considering. True, it has not had so important an effect as the methodological inhibition that is to be examined in the next chapter, for as a style of work its spread has been limited. The fact is that it is not readily understandable; the suspicion is that it may not be altogether intelligible. This is, to be sure, a protective advantage, but it is a disadvantage in so far as its pronundamentos are intended to influence the working habits of social scientists.

Not to make fun but to report factually, we have to admit that its productions have been received by social scientists in one or more of the following ways: To at least some of those who claim to understand it, and who like it, it is one of the greatest advances in the entire history of social science. To many of those who claim to understand it, but who do not like it, it is a clumsy piece of irrelevant ponderosity.

These are rare, if only because dislike and impatience prevent many from trying to puzzle it out. To those who do not claim to understand it, but who like it very much—and there are many of these—it is a wondrous maze, fascinating precisely because of its often splendid lack of intelligibility. Those who do not claim to understand it and who do not like it—if they retain the courage of their convictions—will feel that indeed the emperor has no clothes.

Of course there are also many who qualify their views, and many more who remain patiently neutral, waiting to see the professional outcome, if any. Now all this raises a sore point—intelligibility. That point, of course, goes beyond grand theory,2 but grand theorists are so deeply involved in it that I fear we really must ask: Is grand theory merely a confused verbiage or is there, after all, also something there?

The answer, I think, is: Something is there, buried deep to be sure, but still something is being said. So the question becomes: After all the impediments to meaning are removed from grand theory and what is intelligible becomes available, what, then, is being said?

I have already indicated my choice of example. I want now to make clear that I am not here trying to judge the value of Parsons' work as a whole. If I refer to other writings of his, it is only in order to clarify, in an economical way, some point contained in this one volume. In translating the contents of The Social System into English, I do not pretend that my translation is excellent, but only that in the translation no explicit meaning is lost.

This—I am asserting—contains all that is intelligible in it. In particular, I shall attempt to sort out statements about something from definitions of words and of their wordy relations. Both are important; to confuse them is fatal to clarity. To make evident the sort of thing that is needed, I shall first translate several passages; then I shall offer two abbreviated translations of the book as a whole. To translate the example quoted at the opening of this chapter: People often share standards and expect one another to stick to them.

In the second place, the structuring of the reactions of alter to ego's action as sanctions is a function of his conformity with the standard. Therefore conformity as a direct mode of the fulfillment of his own need-dispositions tends to coincide with conformity as a condition of eliciting the favorable and avoiding the unfavorable reactions of others. In so far as, relative to the actions of a plurality of actors, conformity with a value-orientation standard meets both these criteria, that is from the point of view of any given actor in the system, it is both a mode of the fulfillment of his own need-dispositions and a condition of 'optimizing' the reactions of other significant actors, that standard wiU be said to be 'institutionalized.

Therefore there is always a double aspect of the expectation system which is integrated in relation to it. On the one hand there are the expectations which concern and in part set standards for the behavior of the actor, ego, who is taken as the point of reference; these are his 'role-expectations. The relation between role-expectations and sanctions then is clearly reciprocal.

What are sanctions to ego are role-expectations to alter and vice versa. A role then is a sector of the total orientation system of an individual actor which is organized about expectations in relation to a particular interaction context, that is integrated with a particular set of valuestandards which govern interaction with one or more alters in the appropriate complementary roles.

These alters need not be a defined group of individuals, but can involve any alter if and when he comes into a particular complementary interaction relationship with ego which involves a reciprocity of expectations with reference to common standards of value-orientation. The institutionalization of a set of role-expectations and of the corresponding sanctions is clearly a matter of degree. This degree is a function of two sets of variables; on the one hand those affecting the actual sharedness of the value-orientation patterns, on the other those determining the motivational orientation or commitment to the fulfillment of the relevant expectations.

As we shall see a variety of factors can influence this degree of institutionalization through each of these channels. The polar antithesis of full institutionalization is, however, anomie, the absence of structured complementarity of the interaction process or, what is the same thing, the complete breakdown of normative order in both senses.

Just as there are degrees of institutionalization so are there also degrees of anomie. The one is the obverse of the other. An institution will be said to be a complex of institutionalized role integrates which is of strategic structural significance in the social system in question.

The institution should be considered to be a higher order unit of social structure than the role, and indeed it is made up of a plurality of interdependent role-patterns or components of them. Each takes into account what others expect. When such mutual expectations are sufficiently definite and durable, we call them standards. Each man also expects that others are going to react to what he does.

We call these expected reactions sanctions. Some of them seem very gratifying, some do not. When men are guided by standards and sanctions, we may say that they are playing roles together. It is a convenient metaphor. And as a matter of fact, what we call an institution is probably best defined as a more or less stable set of roles. When within some institution— or an entire society composed of such institutions—the standards and sanctions no longer grip men, we may speak, with Durkheim, of anomie.

At one extreme, then, are institutions, with standards and sanctions all neat and orderly. At the other extreme, there is anomie: as Yeats says, the center does not hold; or, as I say, the normative order has broken down.

In fact, many of the ideas of grand theorists, when translated, are more or less standard ones available in many textbooks of sociology. But in connection with 'institutions' the definition given above is not quite complete. Well, those are institutions. Within them, the expectations of some men seem just a little more urgent than those of anyone 8 Parsons, op. That is because, as we say, they have more power. Or to put it more sociologically, although not yet altogether so: an institution is a set of roles graded in authority.

Furthermore, this attachment to common values, while it may fit the immediate gratificational needs of the actor, always has also a 'moral' aspect in that to some degree this conformity defines the 'responsibilities' of the actor in the wider, that is, social action systems in which he participates. Obviously the specific focus of responsibility is the collectivity which is constituted by a particular common value-orientation.

Finally, it is quite clear that the 'sentiments' which support such common values are not ordinarily in their specific structure the manifestation of constitutionally given propensities of the organism. They are in general learned or acquired.

Furthermore, the part they play in the orientation of action is not predominantly that of cultural objects which are cognized and 'adapted to' but the culture patterns have come to be internalized; they constitute part of the structure of the personality system of the actor itself.

Such sentiments or Valueattitudes' as they may be called are therefore genuine need-dispositions of the personality. It is only by virtue of internalization of institutionalized values that a genuine motivational integration of behavior in the social structure takes place, that the 'deeper' layers of motivation become harnessed to the fulfillment of role-expectations.

Though complete integration of a social system of motivation with a fully consistent set of cultural patterns is empirically unknown, the conception of such an integrated social system is of high theoretical significance. Parsons' footnote: CWM. This integration of a set of common value patterns with the internalized need-disposition structure of the constituent personalities is the core phenomenon of the dynamics of social systems. That the stability of any social system except the most evanescent interaction process is dependent on a degree of such integration may be said to be the funda- GRAND THEORY 31 mental dynamic theorem of sociology.

It is the major point of reference for all analysis which may claim to be a dynamic analysis of social process. Moreover, they often treat such conformity as a very good thing—even when it seems to go against their immediate interests. That these shared values are learned rather than inherited does not make them any the less important in human motivation.

On the contrary, they become part of the personality itself. As such, they bind a society together, for what is socially expected becomes individually needed. This is so important to the stability of any social system that I am going to use it as my chief point of departure if I ever analyze some society as a going concern, end of translation In a similar fashion, I suppose, one could translate the pages of The Social System into about pages of straightforward English.

The result would not be very impressive. It would, however, contain the terms in which the key problem of the book, and the solution it offers to this problem, are most clearly statable. Any idea, any book can of course be suggested in a sentence or expounded in twenty volumes. It is a question of how full a statement is needed to make something clear and of how important that something seems to be: how many experiences it makes intelligible, how great a range of problems it enables us to solve or at least to state.

To suggest Parsons' book, for example, in two or three phrases: We are asked: How is social order possible? Of course not, but it is the main point. But isn't this unfair? Can't any book be treated this way? Of course. Here is a book of my own treated in this way: Who, after all, runs America? No one runs it altogether, but in so far as any group does, the power elite. They ought to be about man and society and sometimes they are.

These actions are often rather orderly, for the individuals in the system share standards of value and of appropriate and practical ways to behave. Some of these standards we may call norms; those who act in accordance with them tend to act similarly on similar occasions. That this is a metaphor I am now going to forget, because I want you to take as very real my Concept: The social equilibrium.

There are two major ways by which the social equilibrium is maintained, and by which—should either or both fail—disequilibrium results. Part of this social making of persons consists in their acquiring motives for taking the social actions required or expected by others.

By Tine' of course, I refer to whatever action is typically expected and approved in the social system. The first problem of maintaining social equilibrium is to make people want to do what is required and expected of them. That failing, the second problem is to adopt other means to keep them in line. The best classifications and definitions of these social controls have been given by Max Weber, and I have little to add to what he, and a few other writers since then, have said so well.

One point does puzzle me a little: given this social equilibrium, and all the socialization and control that man it, how is it possible that anyone should ever get out of line?

This I cannot explain very well, that is, in the terms of my Systematic and General Theory of the social system. About these two problems, I recommend that whenever you come upon them, you undertake empirical investigations, end of translation Perhaps that is enough. In the meantime, we have three tasks: first, to characterize the logical style of thinking represented by grand theory; second, to make clear a certain generic confusion in this particular example; third, to indicate how most social scientists now set up and solve Parsons' problem of order.

My purpose in all this is to help grand theorists get down from their useless heights. The basic cause of grand theory is the initial choice of a level of thinking so general that its practitioners cannot logically get down to observation. They never, as grand theorists, get down from the higher generalities to problems in their historical and structural contexts.

This absence of a firm sense of genuine problems, in turn, makes for the unreality so noticeable in their pages. One resulting characteristic is a seemingly arbitrary and certainly endless elaboration of distinctions, which neither enlarge our understanding nor make our experience more sensible. This in turn is revealed as a partially organized abdication of the effort to describe and explain human conduct and society plainly.

When we consider what a word stands for, we are dealing with its semantic aspects; when we consider it in relation to other words, we are dealing with its syntactic features. These are three 'dimensions of meaning' which Charles M.

I, No. University of Chicago Press, Its practitioners do not truly understand that when we define a word we are merely inviting others to use it as we would like it to be used; that the purpose of definition is to focus argument upon fact, and that the proper result of good definition is to transform argument over terms into disagreements about fact, and thus open arguments to further inquiry.

The grand theorists are so preoccupied by syntactic meanings and so unimaginative about semantic references, they are so rigidly confined to such high levels of abstraction that the 'typologies' they make up—and the work they do to make them up— seem more often an arid game of Concepts than an effort to define systematically—which is to say, in a clear and orderly way—the problems at hand, and to guide our efforts to solve them.

One great lesson that we can learn from its systematic absence in the work of the grand theorists is that every self-conscious thinker must at all times be aware of—and hence be able to control—the levels of abstraction on which he is working.

The capacity to shuttle between levels of abstraction, with ease and with clarity, is a signal mark of the imaginative and systematic thinker. Around such terms as 'capitalism' or 'middle class' or 'bureaucracy' or 'power elite' or 'totalitarian democracy,' there are often somewhat tangled and obscured connotations, and in using these terms, such connotations must be carefully watched and controlled. Around such terms, there are often 'compounded' sets of facts and relations as well as merely guessed-at factors and observations.

These too must be carefully sorted out and made clear in our definition and in our use. To clarify the syntactic and the semantic dimensions of such conceptions, we must,be aware of the hierarchy of specificity under each of them, and we must be able to consider all levels of this hierarchy. And to what extent are we entitled to assume that, by definition, the term implies assertions about the political order as well as economic institutions?

Such habits of mind I suppose to be the keys to systematic thinking and their absence the keys to the fetishism of the Concept. Perhaps one result of such an absence will become clearer as we consider, more specifically now, a major confusion of Parsons' book. Seemingly, this is deliberate in the interest of making the concern of sociologists a specialized endeavor distinct from that of economists and political scientists. Sociology, according to Parsons, has to do with 'that aspect of the theory of social systems which is concerned with the phenomena of the institutionalization of patterns of value-orientation in the social system, with the conditions of that institutionalization; and of changes in the patterns, with conditions of conformity with and deviance from a set of such patterns, and with motivational processes in so far as they are involved in all of these.

We would also like to find out why there is a variety of such values and why they change. When we do find a more or less unitary set of values, we would like to find out why some people do and others do not conform to them, end of translation As David Lockwood has noted,7 such a statement delivers the sociologist from any concern with 'power,' with economic and political institutions. I would go further than that. This statement, and, in fact, the whole of Parsons' book, deals much more 6 Parsons, op.

VII, 2 June Those in authority attempt to justify their rule over institutions by linking it, as if it were a necessary consequence, with widely believed-in moral symbols, sacred emblems, legal formulae.

These central conceptions may refer to a god or gods, the Vote of the majority,' 'the will of the people,' 'the aristocracy of talent or wealth,' to the 'divine right of kings,' or to the allegedly extraordinary endowment of the ruler himself.

Social scientists, following Weber, call such conceptions legitimations,' or sometimes 'symbols of justification. Similarly in psychological analysis, such master symbols, relevant when they are taken over privately, become the reasons and often the motives that lead persons into roles and sanction their enactment of them.

If, for example, economic institutions are publicly justified in terms of them, then references to self-interest may be acceptable justification for individual conduct. But, if it is felt publicly necessary to justify such institutions in terms of 'public service and trust,' the old self-interest motives and reasons may « H. Gerth and C.

Legitimations that are publicly effective often become, in due course, effective as personal motives. This is, indeed, a useful and important subject.

They conclude with considerations on issues of class, power, and warfare. Part Two of the book includes a series of reflections from scholars who were invited to give personal thoughts on the impact of Mills's writings in their sociological work, with particular attention to their own 'biography and history'. With renowned international contributors and expert contributions from a range of specialisms, this book will appeal to academics, students and researchers of sociology.

This edited collection calls for renewed attention to the concept of the sociological imagination, allowing social scientists to link private issues to public troubles.

Inspired by the eminent Glasgow-based sociologist, John Eldridge, it re-engages with the concept and shows how it can be applied to analyzing society today. A brief book that uses examples from a college or university setting to illustrate society in terms of social groups and forces. Wright Mills and the Cuban Revolution, A.

Javier Trevino reconsiders the opinions, perspectives, and insights of the Cubans that Mills interviewed during his visit to the island in Author : Joseph A. Scimecca Publisher: Port Washington, N. What would a book address, aiming to attract and inform students in the 21st century?