Stanley Aronowitz has suggested that sociology may be experiencing a resurgence of interest in the work of C. Wright Mills, a veritable Mills Revival. I think this is a good thing for sociology. I confess to having a keen fascination with C. Wright Mills (image from: C.WrightMills.org). I, like so many sociologists, came to the discipline through Mills’ notion of the sociological imagination, that is a grasp of the intersection of biography and history, between private trouble and public issues. In part, I identify with him because we shared a similar geographic trajectory as Mills and I are both Texas-born and raised sociologists who ended up in New York. I don’t, as Mills famously did, ride a motorcycle (though my girlfriend does).
While most of us who have taught an introductory sociology class have drawn on the concept of the sociological imagination, what endures for many sociologists about Mills’ work is his appendix to that work, “On Intellectual Craftsmanship.” If you can read it while translating every “he” to “she” (or a gender neutral pronoun), then it can be a compelling and relevant text for what we do as sociologists. I was just re-reading it and wondered how Mills, were he alive today, might update it for the digital age. Kiernan Healy has done a nice job of this in his post “On Wasting One’s Time,” in which he pulls an excerpt of Mills’ appendix and strategically inserts the word “blog,” for Mills’ use of the term “file.” The notion of “playfulness” that Mills writes about, the arranging, re-arranging of the file, contrasting extremes and opposites of one concept, the search for comparative examples, are all quantum leaps easier in the digital era. For someone who loves knowledge, the Internet can seem like a vast playground of searching and knowing and exploring. Mills, as Todd Gitlin points out, was also a gifted – if solitary – political radical. And, in that regard, I have no doubt that were Mills alive today, he’d have his own blog.
There are lots of other bits in Mills’ appendix that are worth revisiting in the digital age, and I’ll be exploring some more of those here in days to come.