When in the course of our work we are uncertain, we sometimes become more concerned with our methods than with the content of our problems. We then try to clarify our conceptions and tighten our procedures. And as we re-examine studies that we feel have turned out well, we create conscious models of inquiry with which we try to guide our own work-in-progress.

C. Wright Mills was that rarity among American thinkers — a political intellectual — who drew primarily on Western liberal traditions, American traditions of moral pragmatism and craftsmanship, the social classics and methods of sociology, to fashion a unique critical voice. Writing at the end of the liberal era, he brilliantly captured the outlines of a post-modern society he referred to as the “fourth epoch.” In this work, he anticipated and helped shape much of what was good in (...) the American new left, raising questions which remain largely unanswered twenty-four years after his untimely death at age forty-five. Mills argued that the elaboration of reason and culture was necessary to oppose the new “behemoth” of social rationalization. (shrink)

C.Wright Mills (1917-63) was one of the great sociologists and leading public intellectuals of the last century. His contribution to the sociology of power elites, industrial relations, bureaucracy, social structure and personality, reformist and revolutionary politics and the sociological imagination are seminal. These three volumes, edited by one of America's most influential sociologists and cultural commentators, provides an unparalleled resource for understanding the intellectual relevance of Mill's writings. Mill's engagement with contemporary issues and his sociological vision emerge powerfully. (...) The challenge he offers to sociologists is reassessed and reaffirmed. This is a landmark collection which provides a timely and masterful critical assessment of Mills's contribution. (shrink)

C. Wright Mills. Letters and Autobiographical Writings. Edited by Kathryn Mills and Pamela Mills. Introduction by Dan Wakefield. xxviii 378 pp., illus., apps., bibl., index. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press,2000. $34.95.

This article takes the fiftieth anniversary of the death of American sociologist C. Wright Mills as a cue to revisit his legacy but also the value of sociology today. It argues that the enduring relevance of Mills’ work is his cultivation of a sociological sensibility, which is both an attentive and sensuous craft and also a moral and political project. The article returns to some of the key aspects of Mills’ life and work, and focuses, in (...) particular, on his influential book The Sociological Imagination. Revisiting the opening and closing chapters of this book – entitled ‘The Promise’ and ‘On Intellectual Craftsmanship’ – this article argues that the contemporary social imagination needs to offer its students the capacity to open out to the world through a heightened sensory attentiveness, which in turn makes possible a different kind of social imaginary. In this way Mills’ gift to the future is a sociological sensibility furnished by its tradition, but one also that is constantly re-tuned to the circumstances and problems of the present. (shrink)

How are we to grasp the genealogy of the “public intellectual”? When, how, and at whose hands did this term first come into use, framing an ideal of democratic responsibility for those who devote their work life to fostering knowledge and criticism—an image usually raised as a reproach to academic insularity though also sometimes assailed for encouraging an evasion of scholarly rigor? At first blush, the phrase seems redundant: the emergence of “intellectual”simpliciteris usually linked to a particular episode—the Dreyfusards’ defense (...) of the French republic—that already implied a commitment by writers, thinkers, and artists to political or civic action. From that time and place, the term traveled quickly across borders and before long to the United States, occasioning controversies from the start over who represented the “intellectual” as a social type and who did not, what activities or purposes best defined the role, and whether that role deserved respect, derision, or reinvention. To be sure, the social, cultural, and political world of “modern” societies has always featured individuals noted for scholarly, creative, speculative, or critical work that resonates with literate audiences attuned to key issues of the moment—whether such people were known as ministers,philosophes, journalists, poets, men or women of letters, Transcendentalists, or even, in some eighteenth-and nineteenth-century usages, natural philosophers or scientists. Nonetheless, the emergence of the noun “intellectual” from the early twentieth century, and its widening use since the 1920s, spawned a persistent and self-conscious discourse concerning the character, value or virtue of such figures. A skeptic might conclude that the addition of the modifier “public” has perpetuated old, tangled debates about intellectuals as such, without bringing with it much greater clarity. Words nonetheless are signs of historical troubles and social discontents. Excavating the usages of “public intellectual” over time can highlight some of the dilemmas that have confronted writers, critics, citizens, and political actors, past and present. (shrink)

The first thorough examination of C. Wright Mills's intellectual roots, this book also is the first to present Mills's full analysis in his unpublished as well as published writings of the work of his precursors, mentors, and critics. Mills' intellectual line of descent is traced from the American institutional economists, especially Thorstein Veblen and Clarence Ayres, and the American pragmatists, especially John Dewey and George H. Mead—an evolution influenced though not determined by ideas from Europe. Always (...) the critic and gadfly, Mills subjected all theories to his special brand of analysis and synthesis. For example, his books on U.S. social stratification are seen by Tilman as a trilogy updating Veblen with ideas from the pragmatists, spiced with a good bit of Max Weber but very little Man. Power, his other chief concern, also was subjected to his creative American eclecticism. As a lifelong seeker of knowledge, Mills studied the great European social thinkers—notably Marx, Mosca, Pareto, Michels, Weber, Mannheim, and Freud—until his untimely death. Explaining Mills's self-description as a "plain Marxist," Tilman writes that it "amounted to little more than a willingness to use Marx's values, vocabulary, and model when these seemed relevant and to ignore them when they did not." Regarding alleged affinities between Freud and Mills, Tilman argues these were "tenuous at best and, although the linkage with the neo-Freudians was stronger, Mills remained critical of Homey and Fromm because they had "not succeeded in entirely overcoming Freud's biological metaphysic." Although the American radical tradition is complex and varied, the heritage that most influenced Mills, Tilman contends, contains elements of evangelical Protestantism and of liberal pragmatism. "It was Charles Wright Mills more than any other thinker in recent years," he concludes, "who synthesized these strands of thought and then wove them into an authentic American radical theory.". (shrink)

The article focuses on stories and storytelling practices as explanatory resources in standardization processes. It draws upon an ethnographic study of the development of a technical standard for data sharing in an ecological research community, where participants struggle to articulate the difficulties encountered in implementing the standard. Building from C. Wright Mills’ classic distinction between private troubles and public issues, the authors follow the development of a story as it comes to assist in transforming individual troubles in standard (...) implementation into an institutional issue for the ecological scientific community. The authors present the “hands-on” social science collaboration in this study as an example of a mechanism for supporting institutionalization of issues. Finally, the authors argue that narratives can serve as effective organizing principles within institutional settings, thereby providing an approach to understand the practical, substantive difficulties that occur in work with data in the sciences. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive guide to reading and understanding the development of Mills's sociological ideas, placing them in the context of his life and his position in American sociology.

Self-knowledge is the focus of considerable attention from philosophers: Knowing Our Own Minds gives a much-needed overview of current work on the subject, bringing together new essays by leading figures. Knowledge of one's own sensations, desires, intentions, thoughts, beliefs, and other attitudes is characteristically different from other kinds of knowledge: it has greater immediacy, authority, and salience. The contributors examine philosophical questions raised by the distinctive character of self-knowledge, relating it to knowledge of other minds, to rationality and agency, externalist (...) theories of psychological content, and knowledge of language. Together these original, stimulating, and closely interlinked essays demonstrate the special relevance of self-knowledge to a broad range of issues in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language. (shrink)

: This article argues that conceptions of community after Dewey despair of an institutional means of recovering individuality, which is the central problem of democracy. They so despair, I contend, because of their politicized view of the individual. I first briefly consider the contrast between Dewey and contemporary proceduralists and civic republicans, before turning to my central discussion: C. Wright Mills, whose critique indicates a historical watershed for Dewey's view of community. Ultimately, despair of a Deweyan sense of (...) community issues in a contemporary stalemate between what I identify as the political "activist" and "apathist.". (shrink)

The Routledge International Handbook of C. Wright Mills Studies brings together leading scholars of the work of radical sociologist C. Wright Mills to showcase its impact across the social sciences. Showing how Mills' thought can be taken up - and in some cases, sympathetically reformulated - to tackle problems of power and politics, it presents an authoritative state-of-the-art overview of Mills' groundbreaking ideas and his far-reaching theoretical and methodological impact. Crucially, the volume also illustrates (...) the value of thinking with Mills in addressing the complexities of contemporary capitalist democracies. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, organization studies, peace and conflict studies, criminology, politics and public administration. (shrink)

This thesis argues for a reconsideration of the social theories of Max Horkheimer and C. Wright Mills in order to increase our understanding of the ideological forces at play in modern society. Despite clear similarities in their work in terms of both subject matter and perspective, the discipline of political science lacks a critical comparison of their writings. I demonstrate that a comprehensive and comparative reading of Horkheimer and Mills can offer a new way to address many (...) issues that remain at the heart of writings on ideology, the production of knowledge, and the culture industry. Instead of simply studying the concept of ideology as it appears in each theorist's writings, I propose to place their views in dialogue with one another. Taken together, Horkheimer and Mills provide an illuminating and dynamic perspective on the current, and often conflicting approaches to the theory of ideology. ;Much of the current literature on ideology reflects fixed positions with little room for compromise. The impasse in the study of ideology revolves around the conceptualization of ideology as either enabling or constraining critical consciousness. A combination of the writings of Horkheimer and Mills can guide social theorists beyond the present impasse towards a reflexive theory of ideology, one that considers its own social and ethical presuppositions and normative values. (shrink)

In Toward a Pragmatist Sociology, Robert Dunn explores the relationship between the ideas of philosopher and educator John Dewey and those of sociologist C. Wright Mills in order to provide a philosophical and theoretical foundation for the development of a critical and public sociology. Dunn recovers an intellectual and conceptual framework for transforming sociology into a more substantive, comprehensive, and socially useful discipline. Toward a Pragmatist Sociology argues that Dewey and Mills shared a common vision of a (...) relevant, critical, public sociology dedicated to the solution of societal problems. Dunn investigates the past and present state of the discipline, critiquing its dominant tendencies, and offering historical examples of alternatives to conventional sociological approaches. By stressing the similar intellectual and moral visions of both men, Toward a Pragmatist Sociology provides an original treatment of two important American thinkers whose work offers a conception and model of a sociology with a sense of moral and political purpose and public relevance. It should liberate future sociologists and others to regard the discipline as not only a science but an intellectual, moral, and political enterprise. (shrink)

Toward A Sociological Imagination builds on the ideas C. Wright Mills expressed in The Sociological Imagination for an approach to the scientific method broad enough to open up to the full range of knowledge within the sociology discipline. In this book, nine sociologists and one philosopher provide detailed tests of the utility of the approach within diverse substantive sociological areas.

Storage and Commodity Markets is primarily a work of economic theory, concerned with how the capability to store a surplus affects the prices and production of commodities. Its focus on the behaviour, over time, of aggregate stockpiles provides insights into such questions as how much a country should store out of its current supply of food considering the uncertainty in future harvests. Related topics covered include whether storage or international trade is a more effective buffer and whether stockpiles are more (...) useful in raw or processed form. Several chapters are devoted to analysing such government programmes as price bands, buffer stocks, and strategic reserves. This material is in the domain of applied welfare analysis with public finance. Because the theory presented is sufficiently general, it should be of interest to macroeconomists studying aggregate inventories or savings and to those in operations research studying inventory and pricing policies of large firms. (shrink)