In 1959, sociologist C. Wright Mills named the sociological imagination: the ability to see how our most private struggles connect to the wider society. His signature move is to turn a personal trouble into a public issue. Pick a trouble, then flip the lens.
Pick a trouble
Personal troubles lie within the individual and their immediate world. Public issues transcend the individual and lie in the structure of society.— C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959
Five everyday troublestap one, then flip the lens
💡 The core skill of sociology is this flip — from private biography to social structure. Émile Durkheim showed it long before Mills: even suicide, the most private act, follows stable social rates.