Presidential Address On The Sociological Imagination Revisited

Abstract

This article offers a critical reading of C. Wright Mills's The Sociological Imagination (1959). Such a reading reveals the need to reassess the basis, practice, purpose, and impact of sociology. Accordingly, interpretive materials drawn from stories about and by alcoholics and a new cultural grouping, Adult Children of Alcoholics, are used to illustrate the foundations of a minimalist sociology.Know that the … sociological imagination has its chance to make a difference in the quality of life in our time. (Mills 1959, p. 226)