under construction
Do not allow public issues as they are officially formulated, or troubles as they are privately felt, to determine the problems that you take up for study. Above all, do not give up your moral and political autonomy by accepting in somebody else's terms the illiberal practicality of the bureaucratic ethos or the liberal practicality of the moral scatter. Know that many personal troubles cannot be solved merely as troubles, but must be understood in terms of public issues - and in terms of the problems of history making. Know that the human meaning of public issues must be revealed by relating them to personal troubles - and to the problems of the individual life. Know that the problems of social science, when adequately formulated, must include both troubles and issues, both biography and history, and the range of their intricate relations. Within that range the life of the individual and the making of societies occur; and within that range the sociological imagination has its chance to make a difference in the quality of human life in our time. (Mills 1959: 226)
Mills was born in Waco, Texas in 1916. He died in 1962 - a controversial and larger than life figure. He was described by his biographer as an 'American Utopian' (Horowitz 1983). He was committed to social change - and angered by the oppression he saw around him. He put himself outside the mainstream of American social comment by his support for Castro and his critique of what he saw to be US imperialism. He was also critical of what passed for contemporary sociology. But, at the same time, he was also heir to key north American intellectual traditions such as pragmatism. He believed that knowledge, properly used, could bring about change and the good society - and that if the good society was not yet here, it was primarily the fault of intellectuals - people of knowledge (Wallerstein quoted in Horowitz 1983: 7). His books include White Collar (1953), The Power Elite (1956) and, with Hans Gerth an influential translation and collection of Max Weber's writing From Max Weber (1948). He was a vociferous reader, a superb writer - and was able to make a distinctive contribution to American sociological theory especially in the area of class, power and social structure.
However, at a personal level he seems to have been thoroughly disagreeable. He was anti-authoritarian, flambouyant and individualistic (another word might be selfish). Happy to criticise behaviour in others that he himself happily engaged in. He was said to disguise his faults by admitting to even worse faults.
He responded to others' claims that his behaviour was boorish by behaving even more outlandishly. Critics were disarmed when he admitted to even worse character faults than he in fact possessed.. Mills personal style led to a near unamimous negative consensus about him. However much those who knew him firsthand differed about the quality of his work, they were unamimous about his personality. (Horowitz 1983: 4)
When, in a city of 100,000, only one man is unemployed, that is his personal trouble, and for its relief we properly look to the character of the man, his skills, and his immediate opportunities. 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. (Mills 1959: 9)
In an appendix of 31 pages (in The Sociological Imagination 1959), Mills provides us with one of the defining twentieth century statements concerning the nature of intellectual life - and the sort of qualities that we need to carry into our activities as practitioners. He begins the Appendix by making a point that many of us have learnt the hard way - 'the most admirable thinkers within the scholarly community you have chosen to join do not split their work from their lives. They seem to take both too seriously to allow such disassociation, and they want to use each foe the enrichment of the other' (ibid: 195). This is a theme that appears time and again in Mills' work. It involves him in constantly looking to the relationship between the whole and the parts. By looking to the whole - and seeing the parts as elements of the whole - we are able to see the connections between things. To see how one element cannot exist in this way or that - without the presence of another. Mills wrote:
Scholarship is a choice of how to live as well as a choice of career; whether he knows it or not, the intellectual workman forms his own self as he works toward the perfection of his craft; to realize his own potentialities, and any opportunities that come his way, he constructs a character which has as its core the qualities of a good workman.
What this means is that you must learn to use your life experience in your intellectual work: continually to examine and interpret it. In this sense craftsmanship is the center of yourself and you are personally involved in every intellectual product upon which you work. (Mills 1959: 196)
In these words we can see sentiments that are familiar to us as informal and community educators. We have had to focus on our selves, to develop a particular character or way of being as workers, and to make a commitment to our craft. We have had to use our life experience, to reflect on encounters and feelings, to build theories and commitments about how we may act and live our lives.
Extracts from the Power Elite can be found at: http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/courses/millsr1.html
C. Wright Mills Homepage: good starting point for exploring Mills - with pages exploring the different areas of his work.
Prepared by Mark K. Smith
© Mark K. Smith 1999
