(Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2000 pp. 9-10)

Mooney, L. A., Knox, D., & Schacht, C. (2000). Understanding social problems (2nd ed.). Cincinnati, OH: Wadsworth. 

The Sociological Imagination

The sociological imagination, a term developed by Charles Wright Mills (1959), refers to the ability to see the connection between our personal lives and the social world in which we live. When we use our sociological imagination, we are able to distinguish between "private troubles" and "public issues" and to see connections between the events and conditions of our lives and the social and historical context in which we live.

For example, that one man is unemployed constitutes a private trouble. That millions of people are unemployed in the United States constitutes a public issue. Once we understand that personal troubles such as HIV infection, criminal victimization, and poverty are shared by other segments of society, we can look for the elements of social structure and culture that contribute to these public issues and private troubles. If the various elements of social structure and culture contribute to private troubles and public issues, then society's social structure and culture must be changed if there concerns are to be resolved.

Rather than viewing the private trouble of being unemployed as being due to an individual's faulty character or lack of job skills, we may understand unemployment as a public issue that results from the failure of the economic and political institutions of society to provide job opportunities to all citizens. Technological innovations emerging from the Industrial Revolution led to individual workers being replaced by machines. During the economic recession of the 1980s, employers fired employees so the firm could stay in business. Thus, in both these cases, social forces rather than individual skills largely determined whether a person was employed or not.