|
1
|
- Appendix to C. Wright Mills’
- The Sociological Imagination
- Prepared by Muhammed A. Asadi
|
|
2
|
- “To the individual social scientist who feels himself part of the
classic tradition (of sociology), social science is the practice of a
craft. A man (or woman) at work on problems of substance, he/she is
among those who are quickly made impatient and weary by elaborate
discussions of method-and-theory-in-general; so much of it interrupts
his proper studies. It is much better, he believes, to have one account
by a working student of how he is going about his work than a dozen
'codifications of procedure' by specialists who as often as not have
never done much work of consequence.” (C. Wright Mills)
|
|
3
|
- How do you go about practicing your craft?
- How do you make your experience relevant to understanding your condition
and the condition of your society
|
|
4
|
- 1. Do not split your work from your life. Live your work. By work is
meant your work as a social scientist. Use your work to enrich your life
and your life to enrich your work.
- Your work as a social scientist will help you understand your life, that
is how your work enriches your life & Your life experience will
direct your research that is how your life enriches your work.
|
|
5
|
- Scholarship is not only how you do your work, it is also how you live
your life: Your past guides your present and defines your capacity for
future experience and research
|
|
6
|
- How are you going to make this experience meaningful?
|
|
7
|
- Your life experience is captured and organized and made meaningful to
your work by keeping a journal in the form of a file that has categories
for :
- Personal experience
- Professional Activities
- Studies Underway
- Studies Planned
- Master section- major problems as you see them
|
|
8
|
- A journal kept in this fashion will enrich your work and your life-
(note I said “your work” not “corporate work” ) by:
- Organizing your experience
- Removing repetition, since you’ll have your experience documented
- It will help you capture fringe thoughts that are lost if not noted
down. We get these “revelations” all the time.
- Personal experience is paramount as a source of ORIGINAL intellectual
work. Don’t lose it, organize it, note it down, keep a journal. Use
concepts to understand your experience, not concepts as ends in
themselves
|
|
9
|
- People in a bureaucratized ‘mass society’ have very little “personal
experience”, their “experience” is conditioned from above: everything
and every day is almost the same. Yet the little “personal experience”
they have can be a guide to original intellectual work. It should not be
lost
- By reasoning and arguing with yourself ( i.e. reflection), and
organizing your “personal experience” by keeping a journal, you develop
an ability to a) control your experience, b) develop a habit of writing
and c) awaken your “inner world”. Once your “inner world” awakes, you
will never feel bored. Your work will become your leisure.
|
|
10
|
- Most social scientists become technicians in a bureaucratic
organization, they write only when they need to get grants ( i.e. money)
for research, or what others tell them to write about (to sell books
that are popular etc).
- As such their work becomes a kind of “salesmanship” fitting in with what
corporate culture demands, work that is measured in terms of money. All
originality and passion from work is lost, it becomes detached from the
intellectual and you can tell the artificial character of their work
when you read it.
|
|
11
|
- Now that you have a journal in the form of a file, make a list of
problems that you want to research, and plans of research that you are
going to follow. That will be the “master” section of your file. The
“major” problems of social science as you see them
- Don’t get stuck on any one plan, triangulate- don’t get lost in the
method you use in maintaining the file and lose its purpose. Be flexible
not bureaucratic
|
|
12
|
- When you read books that are relevant to your topic of research, you can
use them in one of three ways:
- 1. You accept what the author says, just restate the same.
- 2. You refute what he/she says
- 3. Use the work only as one of many suggestions for your own
elaboration, e.g. how can you test what the author has said: by turning
it into testable hypothesis or statements.
|
|
13
|
- Note taking and writing during reading is a good way to learn. Notes
often lead to reflection and enhance comprehension of what you are
reading.
- Keep designing studies and plans of studies even if you don’t have the
funds or grants to carry them out.
|
|
14
|
- 1. Elements, definitions and core concepts, which ones are you going to
use
- 2. Logical relationship between definitions and what you’re studying
- 3. Eliminate false views using these relationships
- 4. Restate the question now that you know the above.
|
|
15
|
- Reasoning and your file will help you to combine concepts that you never
thought were combinable. You will develop the sociological imagination,
a sort of “playfulness of the mind”.
- Sociological Imagination => {history+biography+social structure} and
their interrelationship.
|
|
16
|
- 1. Arrange and rearrange your files i.e. spend quality-time with your
files. It represents the “meaning” of your life, respect it.
- 2. Develop a “playfulness” of the mind- towards phrases, words, ideas,
and levels of generalization- if generalizations are huge, break them
down into testable forms.
|
|
17
|
- 3. Cast your notions into types- (Typification) i.e. develop your own
core concepts based on knowledge (not stereotypes).
- 4. Draw charts, diagrams and models not only quantitative but
QUALITATIVE as well.
|
|
18
|
- “Charts, tables and diagrams of a qualitative sort are not only ways to
display work already done. They are very often genuine tools of
(intellectual) production. They clarify the dimensions of the types.
They also help you to imagine and build…They are the VERY GRAMMAR of the
Sociological Imagination”
- (C. Wright Mills)
|
|
19
|
|
|
20
|
- 5.Think in terms of extremes, the “ideal types” or “imagined worlds” and
then try to understand what exists in reality. Mills says, “let your
mind become a moving prism, catching light from as many angles as
possible”-
- Don’t get hung up on one thinker
or idea. Don’t restrict your mind or your life by meaningless
stereotypes or bureaucratic rationality.
|
|
21
|
- 6. Orient your work historically, don’t ignore history
- 7. In your work pick out the “themes” what you will address, keep these
in your file and your mind as you do your work, your reading and
writing.
|
|
22
|
- 8. Always present your work in clear, easy to understand language. Be
work oriented as an intellectual and not “career” oriented. Desire for
status is why academicians write in unintelligible ways, (soc-speak) so
that we view them as “professionals” and not mere journalists.
- Those who cannot write simply for all to understand often don’t
understand the concepts themselves! (There is a positive relationship
between arrogance are ignorance. The more ignorant a person is the more
arrogant he or she becomes and vice versa). The more you know should
make you realize how little we all know. Keep it simple, learn humbly.
|
|
23
|
- 9. Write as a human being who is living out a biography and not in
“machine manufactured prose” .When you write assume you are talking to
people, addressing an audience that will make your writing more real
rather than manufactured.
|
|
24
|
- 1. Be a good craftsman/woman:
- Avoid rigid procedure, be flexible and creative. Be your own person, a
one man/woman solution to the world and its problems. Have confidence in
your solutions. No matter how inadequate your solutions are, they will
still be better than the mess those on top have made and are making on a
daily basis.
- Don’t respect the mess-making “power elite”. Don’t give them undue
status. Have confidence in yourself and your solutions to the problems
of the world
|
|
25
|
- 2. Write simply, in clear language.
- 3. Use the sociological imagination that you have developed. Don’t
ignore the history part of that imagination.
- 4. When you study small problems or areas, don’t ignore the larger social
structures in which these occur. In other words be conscious of how
personal troubles transcend local environments and become public issues,
that have public/social/global solutions.
- 5. Translate personal troubles into public issues and then even larger
world issues- be comparative in your analysis and not ethnocentric.
|
|
26
|
- Don’t let official definitions of troubles or issues be your guide to
the troubles and issues you study. Formulate them for yourselves and
don’t be distracted by the “reality” defined for you by the powerful.
- Be sovereign in essence and not just by “official” slogan.
|
|
27
|
- Mills began his book, The Sociological Imagination by stating:
- “Nowadays men/women often feel that their private lives are a series
of traps. They sense that within their everyday worlds, they cannot
overcome their troubles, and in this feeling, they are often quite
correct…..” (C. Wright Mills)
- Once you develop the Sociological Imagination, you can escape, at least
intellectually, from these traps and get a vision of the structure of
your society and the causes of these “traps”-
|
|
28
|
- “There are people in the world all the time who know, but they are
quiet. They just move about quietly, saving the people they know are in
the trap. And then, for the ones who have got out, it's like coming
around from chloroform. They realize that all their lives they've been
asleep and dreaming. And then it's their turn to learn the rules and the
timing
|
|
29
|
- NOW YOU KNOW
- DO YOUR PART
- Keep a file, make your life and experience meaningful
- Be a sovereign Social Scientist, i.e. an advisor to “kings” and a
developer of “publics”.
|
Notes
