Understanding Contemporary Society
Lecture and Seminar Programme
Lecture 1 Understanding contemporary society
This lecture explores what makes social scientific knowledge distinctive. It will
address the difference between social science and common sense, define what
the American sociologist C. Wright Mills termed “the sociological imagination”,
and encourage students to think about their experiences at university in social
scientific terms.
Seminar Reading and Preparation
- Read the brief extracts below from C. Wright Mills on the sociological
imagination, the first chapter of Bauman and May and the introductory chapter of
any sociology textbook. How might you apply these ideas to your own life and to
social issues that concern you? How might you begin to understand your first
week at university in sociological terms? What does it mean to “think
sociologically”? What distinguishes social science from common sense?
Further reading
Wright Mills, C. (1970) [1959] The Sociological Imagination, Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
Bauman, Z. and May, T. (2001) Thinking Sociologically, 2nd ed. Blackwell: Oxford.
(Ch. 1)
Berger, P. (1966) Invitation to Sociology, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Abercrombie, N. (2004) Sociology, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Back, L. (2007) The Art of Listening, Oxford: Berg.
Bauman, Z. (2000) ‘Sociological Enlightenment – For Whom, About What?’,
Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 71-82.
Fuller, S. (2006) The New Sociological Imagination, London: Sage.
Highmore, B. (2009) A Passion for Cultural Studies, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan
Jenkins, R. (2002) Foundations of Sociology, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
The January assessment requires you to review an academic journal article, so it
would be a good idea early on to begin to learn how to find and read academic
journal articles. This piece will give you an idea of how sociologists take an
everyday phenomenon and use sociological theory and methods to make sense of
it. Journal articles like this are available in hard copy in the library, but also
electronically via the E-Library Gateway.
Green, E. and Singleton, C. (2009) “Mobile connections: an exploration of the
place of mobile phones in friendship relations”, Sociological Review, Vol. 57,
No. 1, pp. 125 – 144
Quotations from C. Wright Mills (1970) [1959] The Sociological
Imagination, Harmondsworth: Penguin
1. The sociological imagination defined
“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” (Wright Mills 1970: 11).
“The first fruit of this imagination – and the first lessons of the social science that
embodies it – is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience
and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, that he can
know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those all individuals in
his circumstances” (Wright Mills 1970: 12).
“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” (Wright Mills 1970: 12).
2. The distinction between personal troubles and public issues
“Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination
works is between ‘the personal troubles of milieu’ and ‘the public issues of social
structure’. This distinction is an essential too of the sociological imagination and a
feature of all classic work in social science.
Troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his
immediate relations with others; they have to do with his self and with those
limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware (…)
Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the
individual and the range of his inner life. They have to do with the organization of
many such milieux into the institutions of a 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 (…)
In these terms, consider unemployment. When, in a city of 100,000 only one
man is unemployed, that is his personal trouble (…) But when in a nation of 50
million employees, 15 million men 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 the 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” (Wright Mills 1970:
14-15).