Chapter1. "The Promise of Sociology" by C. Wright Mills

"The Promise of Sociology" by C. Wright Mills is very interesting and informative. In his article, Mills defines “sociological imagination” as the ability to see things socially, and shows how they interact and affect each other. "Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understand without understanding both." (11).  As this quote shows, Mills believes that the individual cannot understand themselves as individuals, also they can’t understand their role in society without this understanding.  Moreover, it is required to understand the society in individual perspectives.

The difference between trouble and issue is how they connect to ideas from individual or society.  Mills believes in the power of the sociological imagination the personal troubles can be connected to public issues. The public issues can also determine personal trouble, also personal trouble can affect public issue. In other word, our individual problems can influence the society. As an example, let’s assume a person become unemployed because of an inner problem in his company. From his view, he just loses his job. But, when these unemployed people increase because of the same problem as a whole, this lead unemployment rate to increase which is public issue. From this article, it makes me think that understanding the sociological imagination is helpful to understand the interaction between individual and society and to control better one’s life.