32 results
Search Results
2. Perpetual Revelations: C. Wright Mills and Paul Lazarsfeld
- Author
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Summers, John H.
- Published
- 2006
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
3. School‐as‐Institution or School‐as‐Instrument? How to Overcome Instrumentalism without Giving Up on Democracy.
- Author
-
Biesta, Gert
- Subjects
DEMOCRACY ,MODERN society ,EDUCATIONAL attainment - Abstract
In contemporary societies, there is a strong push toward seeing education as an instrument for the delivery of particular societal agendas. On such a view, the only questions that remain are how effective education is at delivering such agendas and how its effectiveness can be increased. While this might be a desirable way forward for those who believe that a consensus about the agenda for education can easily be achieved, it is at odds with the idea that a democratic society is characterized by a fundamental plurality of visions about what schools are supposed to be for. Yet the democratic critique of educational instrumentalism cannot be confined to giving each and every vision its own school, as this would simply multiply educational instrumentalism rather than oppose it. A true democratic response thus needs to take education's own interest seriously as well, which, as Gert Biesta argues in this paper, amounts to a defense of the school as institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
4. C. Wright Mills in Copenhagen: Collaboration, Politics, and the Making of 'The Sociological Imagination
- Author
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Petersen, Klaus
- Published
- 2023
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
5. From the "Mass Society" to "The Sociological Imagination": Understanding an Intrinsic Clue to C. Wright Mills's Sociological Writings.
- Author
-
Wen Xiang
- Subjects
MASS society ,SOCIOLOGICAL imagination ,SOCIOLOGISTS - Abstract
This paper tries to explain an intrinsic clue in Mills's empirical study of American society and the epistemological proposal of social sciences. In his stratification trilogy, which consists of New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (1948), White Collar: The American Middle Class (1951), and Men of Power (1956), Mills depicted a grey picture of the mass society, where the power was concentrated in the hands of small groups of elites while the labor and white collar were powerless and indifferent. The Sociological Imagination, which was published after the trilogy, inherited the substantive analysis of the mass society in the trilogy and further raised the problem of human nature in the mass society, namely, the problem of so?called "happy robot." On the other hand, it discussed what stance, position, and intervention intellectuals and social researchers should take when facing such a mass society in formation. In particular, Mills proposed how to use the sociological imagination to pursue the ideal of a democratic society. Thus, the trace from the "mass society" to "the sociological imagination" constitutes an intrinsic clue to an understanding of Mills. On this basis, the paper further discusses the two main issues in Mills' sociological writings, namely, to explore the possibility of social change, and to care about the human meaning in modern society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
6. The Pinter Hypothesis and the Tasks of Critical Theory Today.
- Author
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Dandaneau, Steven P.
- Subjects
CRITICAL theory ,SOCIAL structure ,WORLD War II ,SOCIAL theory ,SELF-deception - Abstract
Harold Pinter's 2005 Nobel Lecture proposes that the post-Second World War history and social structure of the United States parallels that of the former Soviet Union. Pinter also suggests that, for the most part, critical intellectuals in the United States and its junior partner regimes such as Great Britain are themselves so afflicted by self-deception that the are often unaware of the reality of his first supposition. This paper addresses Pinter's Hypothesis via discussion of the last years and late work of the most important of all American sociologists, C. Wright Mills. Mills' empirical and theoretical oeuvre grows in signficance in proportion to evidence in support of Pinter's hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006
7. The Existential Sensibility of C. Wright Mills.
- Author
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Kerr, Keith
- Subjects
AMERICAN literature ,SOCIOLOGISTS ,MODERN society ,SOCIOLOGY education - Abstract
This paper explores the existential and pragmatic underpinnings of C. Wright Mills' thought. This often forgotten aspect of Mills' thinking is examined in the context of the Parsonian influence on sociology in the middle of the 20th century and is also compared to recent developments in existential sociology and postmodernism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2005
8. Introduction: Elites and Power after Financialization.
- Author
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Davis, Aeron and Williams, Karel
- Subjects
ELITE (Social sciences) ,FINANCIALIZATION ,POWER (Social sciences) ,CAPITALISM ,LIQUID assets - Abstract
This article introduces the special issue on ‘Elites and Power after Financialization’. It is presented in three parts. The first sets out the original Weberian problematic that directed the work of Michels and Mills, in the 1910s and 1950s respectively. It then discusses how this framework was appropriated and then cast aside as our understanding of capitalism changed. The second section makes the case for a reset of elite studies around the current capitalist conjuncture of financialization. It is explained how this unifying theme allows for a diverse set of approaches for answering old and new questions about elites and power. The third part identifies four key themes or sites of investigation that emerge within the nine papers offered here. These are: new state-capital relations, innovative forms of value extraction, new elite insecurities and resources in liquid times and the role of elite intermediaries and experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
9. Imagining The Sociological Imagination: the biographical context of a sociological classic.
- Author
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Brewer, John D.
- Subjects
BIOGRAPHICAL methods in sociology ,BIOGRAPHICAL methods in the social sciences ,BIOGRAPHIES ,SOCIOLOGY ,SOCIAL sciences - Abstract
Charles Wright Mills's arguments in The Sociological Imagination are very popular and this paper focuses on the biographical context in which his programmatic statements were occasioned. This breaks new ground by locating The Sociological Imagination and earlier programmatic statements in the professional and personal travails that motivated them. This approach is adopted in order to display the intersection between biography and sociology in Mills's life and career, a feature that he made a central part of sociology's promise. The paper utilizes this approach to reflect on the reasons why The Sociological Imagination became so popular and was able to transcend Mills's general unpopularity at the time of his death: and as part of the explanation of why the dismissal of the book on its publication contrasts with the contemporary view, enabling it to transpose successfully to a time significantly different than at its writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
10. 以“匠人精神”,写“社会学的诗”.
- Author
-
闻翔
- Abstract
Copyright of Society: Chinese Journal of Sociology / Shehui is the property of Society: Chinese Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
- Published
- 2016
11. I Change Myself, I Change the World: Anzaldúa's Sociological Imagination in Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza.
- Author
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Tamdgidi, Mohammad H.
- Subjects
SOCIOLOGISTS ,THEORISTS ,SOCIAL sciences - Abstract
What lessons can sociologists draw from the life and works of the Chicana cultural theorist Gloria E. Anzaldúa for advancing intellectual agenda that make a public difference? In this paper I argue that the key to Anzaldúa's public impact has to be sought in her thesis of the simultaneity of self and global transformations, and the intricate strategies she employed in advancing the thesis through her writings such as Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987). Closely reading the text, I note how for Anzaldúa the transformation of self/world essentially involves the task of healing/transcending/bridging a vast array of habitual dualisms deeply ingrained in our personal and global landscapes. I comparatively contrast Anzaldúa's sociological imagination to that of C. Wright Mills and draw insights from the teach-ings of the Caucasian philosopher and mystic G. I. Gurdjieff to provide a plausible answer to the question of what is so publicly transformative and energizing in Anzaldúa's often privately focused, reflexive writ-ings. I argue that it is the dialectic of private and public sociology informing her sociological imagination that renders her intellectual work so effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
12. C. Wright Mills, power and the power elites -- a reappraisal.
- Author
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Barratt, Edward
- Abstract
This paper revisits and presents a critical appraisal of Mills's analysis of power and the power elite. There are signs of a revival of interest in Mills, but recent commentators have shown little interest in the intellectual, social or political context of his analysis. Setting Mills's thesis in its historical context, we consider an element of his project that has been particularly neglected in recent discussion: Mills's search for possible ways of redistributing power and his attempt to forge an ethico-political stance. Reflecting on recent discussion of contemporary elite formations, we comment on what critics might take from Mills in our own time in relation to the analysis of elites and the politics of critical management studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
13. Re-Reading C. Wright Mills.
- Author
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Barratt, Edward
- Subjects
HISTORY education ,LABOR ,SOCRATIC method (Education) ,POLITICAL science ,LITERARY criticism ,PSYCHOLOGY - Abstract
Inspired by the argument that discussions of the history of management studies commonly suffer from a lack of adequate historical contextualization, this paper offers a re-reading of the work of the well known critic C. Wright Mills. Focusing on Mills’s study of American labour in the 1940’s, we seek to return his work to the conditions in which it took shape: its social, political and philosophical context. We suggest a new way of reading Mills, the manner in which he exemplifies a certain way of leading a critical scholarly life. Mills’s debt to a Socratic tradition of critique is highlighted. We focus on the tentative and provisional elements in his project as he constitutes himself as both political theorist and actor. Without suggesting we aspire to copy Mills and highlighting important tensions, we reconsider the significance of Mills for critical management studies today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
14. Karl Schwesig's Schlegelkeller: Anatomy of a Rejected Warning of Prewar Violence at LIFE Magazine.
- Author
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Johnson, Willa and Johnson, Kirk
- Subjects
HOLOCAUST, 1939-1945, in art ,IDEOLOGY ,NAZI Germany, 1933-1945 - Abstract
This essay examines the 1939 decision by Time, Inc., publisher of LIFE magazine, to reject Schlegelkeller, an eyewitness account of early pre-Holocaust violence by German artist Karl Schwesig. While scholars have suggested a number of reasons why the American press minimized or failed to report the Nazi decimation of Jews and other marginalized groups, we borrow from two influential works by sociologist C. Wright Mills to suggest that an intricate intersection of social statuses, along with ideological perspectives, institutional norms, and personal temperament, may explain why LIFE rejected Schlegelkeller. We discuss the implications of this decision in light of both the magazine's internal metrics and the response of the American news media to prewar violence in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
15. 社会学的想象与想象的社会学.
- Author
-
赵立玮
- Abstract
Copyright of Society: Chinese Journal of Sociology / Shehui is the property of Society: Chinese Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
- Published
- 2016
16. BUSINESS ELITES AND UNDEMOCRACY IN BRITAIN: A WORK IN PROGRESS.
- Author
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Bowman, Andrew, Froud, Julie, Johal, Sukhdev, Moran, Michael, and Williams, Karel
- Subjects
ECONOMIC elites ,BUSINESS conditions ,CAPITALISM ,POLITICAL elites ,CITIZENSHIP ,DEMOCRACY - Abstract
This exploratory paper discusses the undemocratic agenda setting of elites in Britain and how it has changed politics within a form of capitalism where much is left undisclosed in terms of mechanism and methods. It argues for a more radical exploratory strategy using C. Wright Mills' understanding that what is left undisclosed is crucially important to elite existence and power, while recognising the limits on democratic accountability when debate, decision and action in complex capitalist societies can be frustrated or hijacked by small groups. Have British business elites, through their relation with political elites, used their power to constrain democratic citizenship? Our hypothesis is that the power of business elites is most likely conjuncturally specific and geographically bounded with distinct national differences. In the United Kingdom, the outcomes are often contingent and unstable as business elites try to manage democracy; moreover, the composition and organisation of business elites have changed through successive conjunctures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
17. The World Wars and Their Legacies in Africa and in the Affairs of Africans: The Case of East Africa—Kenya.
- Author
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Ejiogu, EC and Igwedibia, Adaoma
- Subjects
WORLD War II ,WORLD War I ,AFRICANS ,MILITARY service - Abstract
This article drew from prominent Kenyan novelist-writer, Ngúgí wa Thiong'o's personal history on the World Wars and their legacies in Africa and on the affairs of Africans, with a focus on East Africa, and especially his country of Kenya. Ngúgí, whose birth in 1938 and childhood years were on the cusp of the World War II (WWII), reveals that the likes of his father who dodged conscription into Britain's Carrier Corps in the first War, and the conscription of his two elder brothers—one of whom died in service while the other returned home alive—for military service in WWII constitute significant and relevance issues for careful exploration on the subject matter of both World Wars and their legacies on the African continent. So are the various actors whose advent as actors in the affairs of Africans and others in East Africa is directly linked to World Wars I and II. Those would include the likes of Carey Francis, who came on in 1940 as the principal of the exclusive all-boys Alliance High where a generation of Kenyans that included Ngúgí received British-style public school education, Evelyn Baring, the then colonial governor-general of Kenya who superintended the imposition of the State of Emergency in Kenya, in the period 1952–1959, and even Idi Amin, a rank and file African enlistee in the King's African Rifles (KAR) in the aftermath of the World War II. Amin and his ilk were deeply involved in the highly repressive British-led campaign during the State of Emergency in Kenya that led to the death of many of their fellow Africans. It is also noteworthy that as a soldier and subsequently, Amin became a central actor in the politics of post-independence Uganda sequel to his overthrow of Milton Obote's government in a 1971 military coup d'état. The spiraling violence that Amin's advent enhanced in Uganda's body politic remains a recurrent feature of governance in that East African state. The analytical reconstruct that emerged in the article is illuminated with elements of C. Wright Mills' age-old and all-time relevant original theory-rich methodological construct, "the sociological imagination" as the theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2022
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
18. Social Imaginary in Social Change.
- Author
-
Canceran, Delfo C.
- Subjects
SOCIOLOGICAL imagination ,SOCIAL change ,SOCIAL science research ,SOCIAL history ,SOCIAL participation - Abstract
This paper is a contribution to the discourse on sociological imagination. The history of imagination reveals that the concept has shifted its focus from a mere reproductive or imitative ability which forms images from a preexisting phenomena to a productive or creative power which produces or constructs its own image of reality. The shift underscores the role of the actor or agent in its engagement with and transformation of the world. Thus, the metaphor of the mirror in imagination has been shattered and replaced with a prism that refracts or diffracts different images. We attribute this creative power to human imagination in society capable of creating surprising possibilities beyond expectation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2009
19. 'We have the same enemies': Simone de Beauvoir and the silent feminism of C. Wright Mills.
- Author
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Anderson, Patrick D.
- Subjects
ENEMIES ,FEMINISM ,SOCIAL theory ,GENDER - Abstract
During the last two decades, there has been a surge of interdisciplinary interest in the writings of the radical twentieth-century sociologist C. Wright Mills, and one of the central issues in this wave of scholarship has been the Mills' relationship to feminism and the place of sex and gender in his social theory. Contemporary scholars assert that Mills was largely ignorant about feminism or even hostile to it and that his social theory basically ignores issues of sex and gender. As this essay shows, the existing consensus is fundamentally mistaken. Mills' social theory of sex and gender and his emerging critique of patriarchy were heavily influenced by the 'silent feminists,' Shira Tarrant's name for the leading women social scientists and philosophers of the 1930s and 40s. Though an analysis of Mills' Character and Social Structure and White Collar, I show that Mills' anti-essentialist conception of gender was inspired by the work of anthropologist Margaret Mead, sociologist Viola Klein, and psychoanalyst Karen Horney. Likewise, through an analysis of Mills' review of Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, I show that not only is his critique of Beauvoir rooted in his readings of the silent feminists but also that Beauvoir's influence on Mills' thought can be traced through his most popular works, The Power Elite and The Sociological Imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
20. Classical sociology meets technology: Doing independent large-scope research.
- Author
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Duke, Shaul A.
- Subjects
SOCIOLOGISTS ,SOCIOLOGY ,SOCIAL theory ,TECHNOLOGICAL innovations - Abstract
During his short-lived but highly productive career, C Wright Mills put forth a vision for how sociology should be done. Two central directives can be gleaned from this vision: to tackle macro social theory issues by doing large-scope research; to achieve scholastic independence by doing non-administrative research. One might ask if Mills is sending scholars on a mission impossible. Analysing these two concepts in terms of both their merits and applicability, the present article indeed identifies a conflict between them, highlighted by what emerges as Mills’ own failure to realize this vision. After deeming these directives worthy goals, the article seeks to determine whether technological advances in the social sciences have the potential to allow both directives to be fulfilled at once. What is shown is that while the technology is ripe to enable autonomous big studies, its implementation by institutional and individual agents severely impedes the vision’s realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
21. From Power Elites to Influence Elites: Resetting Elite Studies for the 21st Century.
- Author
-
Wedel, Janine R.
- Subjects
ELITE (Social sciences) ,BUREAUCRACY ,SOCIAL networks ,DEMOCRATIC socialism ,POWER (Social sciences) - Abstract
The dominant theory of elite power, grounded in Weberian bureaucracy, has analyzed elites in terms of stable positions at the top of enduring institutions. Today, many conditions that spawned these stable ‘command posts’ no longer prevail, and elite power thus warrants rethinking. This article advances an argument about contemporary ‘influence elites’. The way they are organized and the modus operandi they employ to wield influence enable them to evade public accountability, a hallmark of a democratic society. Three cases are presented, first to investigate changes in how elites operate and, second, to examine varying configurations in which the new elites are organized. The cases demonstrate that influence elites intermesh hierarchies and networks, serve as connectors, and coordinate influence from multiple, moving perches, inside and outside official structures. Their flexible and multi-positioned organizing modes call for reconsidering elite theory and grappling with the implications of these elites for democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
22. The Truth is Revolutionary: Mills and Turner as Theoreticians of Participatory Democracy.
- Author
-
Parker, Scott David
- Subjects
PARTICIPATORY democracy ,POLITICAL philosophy ,ANTI-apartheid movements ,ACTIVISM ,SOUTH African history ,TWENTIETH century ,HISTORY - Abstract
Critical analyses of the writings of political philosopher R.A. Turner have gained renewed attention. Turner's advocacy of participatory democracy paralleled that of American sociologist C. Wright Mills, whose own theories have experienced a revival among academics and activists as an alternative to the rise of neoliberal economic policies. Despite the international isolation of apartheid-era South Africa, it experienced social changes in the 1960s and 1970s paralleling those in North America and Western Europe. Mills' call for scholars and activists to forge a New Left rooted in sociological imagination was realised in the American civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Similarly, Rick Turner's own philosophy of radical politics, elucidated inThe Eye of the Needle, found shape within the anti-apartheid resistance in 1970s South Africa. Turner went further than Mills in his practice of public sociology, fusing theory and praxis through his participation in the anti-apartheid struggle. Since Turner's death, the promise of participatory democracy appears to have foundered upon the shoals of neoliberalism and the global ‘race to the bottom’. The challenge for scholars and organisers will be how to best forge a renewed programme of popular conscientisation and community self-management which can realise Turner's vision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
23. A Critique of Max Horkheimer’s Critique of Instrumental Reason
- Author
-
Braun, Jerome
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
24. Confessions of a Sociolator.
- Author
-
Rosenberg, Justin
- Subjects
INTERNATIONAL relations research ,SOCIOLOGICAL imagination ,SOCIAL theory ,SOCIAL change - Abstract
Following recent critiques of ‘the social’ in international theory, this text revisits a contribution the author made to ‘the social turn’ in 1994. While C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination appears to survive the recent critiques, the passage of time has nonetheless revealed a quite different weakness in the author’s use of it: namely, its neglect of ‘the international’ as an object of theory. This neglect, which is indeed common to almost all ‘social theory’, is now being corrected in the growing literature on ‘uneven and combined development’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
25. C. Wright Mills as Designer: Personal Practice and Two Public Talks.
- Author
-
Treviño, A.
- Subjects
DESIGNERS ,WORKMANSHIP ,POWER (Social sciences) ,SOCIOLOGICAL imagination ,ARCHITECTURE ,MOTORCYCLE maintenance & repair ,PHOTOGRAPHY ,HOUSE construction - Abstract
C. Wright Mills repeatedly assumed two main roles throughout his life: those of designer and craftsman. Indeed, design and craftsmanship influenced, substantively and stylistically, most everything he did. Mills's implementation of these two qualities extended to a number of areas including writing books and building houses, but also to motorcycle mechanics, photography, and carpentry. After consideration of Mills's biography and philosophy in the context of design, style, and craftsmanship, two talks that he delivered in Aspen and Toronto, in 1958 and 1959 respectively, are examined. In both cases he addressed his remarks, specifically, to engineers, city planners, artists, and architects. Mills's handwritten notes and various excerpts as well as published sources are consulted to show that Mills-through his biographical exemplification as designer and craftsman, as well as through his writings on power and the cultural apparatus-has had a decisive influence on the sociological study of design and designers; indeed, on designers themselves and on our understanding of design culture. But more than that, I contend that just as sociology and sociologists have wholly embraced Mills's notion of the sociological imagination, so too must they fully espouse and embody his ideals and practices on design and craftsmanship. It is in this way that the discipline and its practitioners can strive for the standard of excellence that Mills set for himself and for his work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
26. Der andere „amerikanische“ Max Weber: Hans H. Gerths und C. Wright Mills’ From Max Weber, dessen deutsche Rezeption und das Konzept der „public sociology“
- Author
-
Neun, Oliver
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
27. SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION FOR THE AGED SOCIETY.
- Author
-
OSSEWAARDE, MARINUS
- Subjects
SOCIOLOGICAL imagination ,OLDER people & society ,SOCIAL theory ,SOCIOLOGY ,DEMOGRAPHIC change ,REASON ,LIBERTY - Abstract
Copyright of Canadian Journal of Sociology is the property of Canadian Journal of Sociology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
- Published
- 2014
28. Prophesying War: How Convincing is The Power Elite?
- Author
-
Whitfield, Stephen J.
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
29. The Seven Degrees of Cincinnati, Social Networks of Social Services
- Author
-
STAMBAUGH, MELONY L.
- Subjects
- Social Research, Social Structure, Sociology, Urban Planning, Cincinnati, social network, C. Wright Mills, H. Russell Bernard
- Abstract
Connections between people creates a social network that extends the circle of people that one knows to the larger community. These networks are also found in the connections between the people we meet through work and volunteerism. This paper looks at the connections made between non-profit organizations located in Cincinnati through membership on boards of multiple organizations. These connections help to move resources through the community.
- Published
- 2008
30. Seeing it whole: staging totality in social theory and art.
- Author
-
Toscano, Alberto
- Subjects
SOCIAL theory ,SOCIOLOGY ,CARTOGRAPHY ,CAPITALISM - Abstract
Can, or should, social theory try to 'see it whole'? This article explores some of the aesthetic, political and conceptual issues that arise when we pose the problem of representing social totality today. It revisits two influential assertions of theory's calling to generate orienting and totalizing representations of capitalist society: C. Wright Mills' plea for the 'sociological imagination' and Fredric Jameson's appeal for an 'aesthetic of cognitive mapping'. Mills and Jameson converge on the need to mediate personal experience with systemic constraints, knowledge with action, while underscoring the political urgency and epistemic difficulty of such a demand. The article contrasts these perspectives with the repudiation of a sociology of totality in the actor-network theory of Bruno Latour. It explores this contrast through the 'panorama' as a visual practice and a metaphor for theory itself. Against Latour's proposal to reduce and relativize totality, it argues that sociology can learn from contemporary artistic efforts to map social and economic power as a whole. 'Panoramic' projects in the arts, such as Allan Sekula's and Mark Lombardi's, can allow us to reflect on sociology's own deficit of imagination, and on the persistence of the desire to 'see it whole' - especially when that whole is opaque, fragmented, contradictory. A live sociology can only gain from greater attention to the critical experiments with forms and methods of representation that are being carried out by artists preoccupied with the staging of social totality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
31. The new welfare-warfare state: challenges to the sociological imagination.
- Author
-
Ossewaarde, Marinus
- Subjects
PUBLIC welfare ,MILITARY science ,SOCIOLOGICAL imagination ,COLD War, 1945-1991 ,SOCIAL scientists ,CAPITALISM - Abstract
C. Wright Mills introduced his concept of the sociological imagination during the Cold War to warn against what he perceived as increasing moral and political indifference and the incapacity of people to relate their own private worlds to world history. Hence, social scientists failed to see that the welfare and peace at home, to which they contributed, were supported by wars waged somewhere far away. The post-Cold War epoch is characterised by new unprecedented challenges raised by neo-liberalism, global capitalism, biotechnology, eugenics, racial hygiene and the biologisation of social policy. The new world is ruled by political, economic and technological forces that closely cooperate with each other and determine world and local histories. The changed social structures also imply that domestic and foreign policies undergo mutations. Yet, they remain the two sides of the same coin, which has now become the neo-liberal objective of unhindered global capitalism. The 'new' or 'updated' social imagination still strives to unmask hidden powers that justify their dominion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2011
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
32. Sociological consciousness as a component of linguistic variation.
- Author
-
Dodsworth, Robin
- Subjects
VARIATION in language ,SOCIOLINGUISTICS ,CONSCIOUSNESS ,LINGUISTIC change ,IMAGINATION ,LINGUISTICS ,QUANTITATIVE research ,SUBJECTIVITY ,MENTAL representation - Abstract
While practice theory has provided a valuable framework for establishing connections between individual-level sociolinguistic variation and social structures, Bourdieu's (1977) formulation of practice theory has been argued to inadequately address subjectivity. The sociologist C. Wright Mills' (1959) concept of the sociological imagination – consciousness of links among personal experiences, social structures, and historical processes – is posited as a partial solution, as it offers a framework for modeling one aspect of subjectivity. Use of the sociological imagination concept is demonstrated through a quantitative acoustic analysis of /o/ fronting in Worthington, Ohio, a Columbus suburb confronting acute urban sprawl. The distribution of /o/ fronting across 21 speakers largely resists traditional sociolinguistic explanations. A close analysis of four speakers' mental representations of the local tensions surrounding urban sprawl reveals significant differences which are argued to account for their variable use of fronted /o/. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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