Sociological Imagination
Summary
In “The Promise, Mills contemplates that a person’s life and how they behave or act are based on society and the events happening around them at that time. In the essay, Mill states that sociological imagination is crucial in helping people understand their habits, lifestyle, and background (Mills, 1959). The concept also plays a vital role in allowing individuals to understand the extent to which society influences them in addition to the different historical events that led to the development of society. Consequently, from Mill’s premises, in order to understand the concept of imagination, it is necessary to connect an individual’s personal or public issues with the events occurring within the society during that time.
Mill premised that based on the connection between an individual’s personal and public issues and the events happening in the society at that time, people tend to conduct themselves differently depending on factors like religious beliefs and whether or not they live in the suburbs or within the city. For instance, in the Promise, Mill asserts that when an individual’s “values” or beliefs are not threatened, then the person usually realizes a state of “well-being.” Nevertheless, if their beliefs are threatened by the events happening in society, then the individual is likely to enter into some “crisis” (Mills, 1959). In other words, Mills explains that individuals whose values are supported by societal experiences tend to attain a state of well-being while those whose beliefs are unsupported by societal history usually encounter a crisis. Furthermore, people within the society whose beliefs or values are neither unsupported nor unsupported by experiences of a society tend to experience indifference.
How Roberts Applies Mills concept
Roberts develops his concept of sociology of writing from Mill’s concept of social imagination. According to Roberts, Mills’ concept of sociology underlines the micro-social processes of a personal biography (Roberts, 1993). In simple terms, it seeks to develop deeper insights into how people cope with “personal trouble” by relying on the definitions of their situation as well as intimate experiences. Roberts also supports Mills’ argument that sociology mainly focuses on the larger social structures which influence an individual’s experiences, which are subsequently shaped by various social norms. On the other hand, Roberts conforms to Mills’ concept in that he constructs sociology writing into two categories, including macro context and personal trouble concept (Roberts, 1993). From a “personal trouble” perspective, Roberts describes how, before submitting their articles to other people to critique, sociological writers usually proof-read their articles to ascertain that the documents do not have spelling or grammatical errors. Likewise, Roberts states that, when professional writers or academicians are asked to write articles on certain topics in their respective areas of expertise, their initial actions often involve identifying and analyzing the intended audience. Thus, the audience enables them to examine the topics from a Macro context.
Paragraph Reflecting on Roberts’ Points
From Robert’s perspective, the expectations and norms of the larger society are increasingly shaping the writing process. Similar to how individuals cannot function without the influence of the more massive social structure, writers cannot communicate effectively without common expectations like sentence structure, appropriate punctuations, word usage in addition to how they apply the various norms about effective writing and communication (Roberts, 1993). Moreover, Roberts affirms that each writing process reflects an extraordinarily personal, and hence every individual must discover what works best for them.