Event overview
The Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths celebrates the 50th Anniversary of 'The Sociological Imagination', by C. Wright Mills
C Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination was published in 1959 some half a century ago. This event explores the legacy of the book but also asks: how has the sociological imagination been transformed since its publication. How is the promise of sociology today different from Mills' formulation? Mills wrote The Sociological Imagination while a Fulbright fellow at the University of Copenhagen during the 1956-1957 academic year. It is a critique of American sociology and also an argument for his own vision enshrined in books like White Collar and The Power Elite. Initially titled 'Autopsy of Social Science' he wrote the book, as Daniel Geary has argued in a recent intellectual biography of Mills, out of the conviction that America sociology had broken its promise. US sociology had resulted in the Grand Theory of Talcott Parson which papered over conflicts and injustices and the abstracted empiricism of Paul Lazarsfield that could not see the empirical wood for the political trees. In a similar spirit we want to use its anniversary to ask probing questions about the state of sociology today.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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24 Oct 2009 | 9:00am - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
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