Response to Mills - Essay Example

Response to Mills Essay I am writing over the C. Wright Mills article entitled “The Sociological Imagination”. I found this article in Appendix A of the textbook.According to Mills, the sociological imagination is a quality of mind that enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and external career of variety of individuals. The occupations and immediate local environments of individuals change and transform according to circumstances and structural changes.

In order to understand them, we are required to look beyond them. Furthermore, the understanding of the life of an individual cannot be possible without the understanding of the history of the society and vice versa. In my opinion, I would completely agree with that notion. It implies that sociological imagination enables individuals to understand their own circumstances and predict their own fate by studying the point in time in which they exist, their experiences and those of other individuals with similar experiences in a different point in time before their existence just to try and gauge their own chances in life.

This means that just from studying an individual’s interests, experiences and their reactions to certain events, one with the sociological imagination is able to approximate the period in which this individual existed in world history and his quality and meaning to the society because every individual leaves behind a historical print: a trademark trail within some sequence that is molded by society and contributes, however minutely, to the course of history.Mills also claims that there is no connection between history and bibliography to an individual’s troubles.

He describes troubles as the problems that occur in the immediate local environment within and outside of an individual. I feel that this is not quite true as individuals are points of intersection of both bibliography and history in the society. Whatever affects the personal character of an individual has some sort of impact on the society and world history in the long run because patterns of the individual’s life are intricately connected to the course of world history.There are some truths to Mill’s essay all centered around people’s private lives and how interwoven they are with the happenings of world history and its repetition.

He emphasizes the need for having the sociological imagination since it changes the way individuals think. I do agree with that up to the point where troubles and issues are separable. They really aren’t since they both affect the individual’s character, interest and experiences which, as a whole, contribute to the direction society steers towards in the making of history.