Essay 7 FD EN-101
Professor Cynthia Vallenti
Jerry "Clapso" Avissato (originally conceived and created by Mr. and Mrs. Avissato)
Documented
Throughout my life I have wondered how it is that people always seem to blame an individual who is less successful then themselves for the problems that have always seemed to me, beyond an individuals ability to solve. How many times have you heard someone telling a homeless panhandler to "get a job"? The person saying, "get a job" is considering the problem of homelessness a personal trouble. As widespread as homelessness is in this country it is, in my opinion, a social issue and not a personal trouble. That more needs to be done by the society to help solve this problem, and many others, seems to fall on deaf ears. I realize that what is a personal trouble and what is a social issue is a moot point. We should at least have the debate, and not fall prey to the knee-jerk reaction to always blame the individual. It is with this in mind that I cite Mills (1959) and what this book means to me in regards to such a debate.
Mills (1959) described the sociological imagination as a concept which "enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and external career of a variety of individuals" (page 5). By this I think he meant that through the use of this concept people could gain insight into their place in history and society and also how others fit into history and society as well.
Mills then went on to describe how the sociological imagination uses the distinction between "the personal troubles of milieu" and "the public issues of social structure" (page 8). He points out that the troubles happen within the individual. If one person loses their job that is a personal trouble of milieu that is best left to that person to solve (i.e. the person goes out and finds another job). Issues involve matters larger then, and outside the scope of the individuals ability to solve. When a large factory closes in a small town and all the workers are fired, the help of larger institutions within society are often necessary to solve the problem (i.e. another company opens a factory in the town and hires the unemployed workers, at a substantially lower rate of pay of course).
In the present environment of American society, which is poisoned by what I call the "rugged individual" myth, many of us seem to be missing the fact that Mills saw so clearly in 1959. That some of the difficulties we face in our lives are solvable by the individual, others however are only solvable by the intervention of larger institutions.
I interviewed an old high school friend of mine, Daniel Kessler (personal communication, December 15, 1999) by phone. Dan is a full-time high-school social studies teacher in New York City. He also teaches sociology at Hunter College in Manhattan. I interviewed Dan with one primary goal in mind. That goal was to get a Marxist view of the sociological imagination.
I asked Dan how Mills work informed his teaching of sociology and was immediately rewarded with Dans take on a Marxist critique of the sociological imagination. It is Dan's contention that from a Marxist standpoint Mills was only half-right. That is, Mills was correct in stating the existence of "the public issues of social structure" but that Mills was incorrect in stating that some problems are "the personal troubles of milieu."
When I asked for further explanation Dan elaborated by using his syllabus for Sociology-101 as an example. To my surprise students in his class are required to read the first chapter of Mills (1959). Why I was surprised that an avowed Marxist would use Mills has to do with the many references I've read concerning the fact that although Mills was considered a leftist, he had a very contentious relationship with the Marxists. The best example I found of such a reference is Mills (1999) which states "He called for young intellectuals to develop a more pragmatic leftist ideology then the Marxism-Leninism, which he vocally derided and detested". That Dan uses Mills as a "trap" can be seen by the fact that the classes use of this work, Dan reported, always leads most, if not all, of his students to interpret Mills (1959) exactly opposite from my interpretation. Most students argue that it is the individual that is almost fully responsible for whatever happens in their lives. Further, Dan states that many students then make the leap that certain ethnic groups are responsible for the lack of success evidenced by individuals within the group. Dan counters that all problems are traceable back to the difficulties society places on all of its members, which is in keeping with Dan's Marxist tilt. Having spent many hours arguing with Dan about all kinds of things, I can only feel sorry for any poor student who tries to argue against him.
Dan neatly deflected my argument that if a person loses their job, that is a trouble best left to the individual to solve. He did so by asking why the person lost their job. Was the person always late for work because of a lack of reliable childcare? Did the person have to take time off to care for a sick family member? Perhaps the stress of living in a success driven society produced an urge to overwork and lead to burnout. All of these things, in Dan's opinion, are caused by the society in which we live and, are not controlled by the individual. Dan goes so far as to say he doesn't even believe that any of us are individuals. He believes that we are completely products of our socialization.
While I understand Dan's arguments, I just can't make the leap that he has. The anarchist in me just can't deal with the total lack of ability to effect our own lives that his thinking seems to imply. Although I agree that the individuals ability to effectively deal with life problems is very limited in most cases and that the socialization we receive is the real predictor of our eventual level of success. I still believe that we do have some ability to forge our own way, even if it's only the ability to define what personal success is for ourselves.
There is also the historic propensity of Marxism, at least as evidenced by the Soviet system, to succumb to the over control of everything and quash the individuals ability to effect their own life. A Marxist might criticize the capitalist system in the same way. This is the down side of the "State" being more active in dealing with the public issues of social structure, not to mention the personal troubles of milieu.
In my given example, in which a factory closes and all the workers lose their jobs, I refer to another company opening a factory in the town as intervention by a larger institution. As you may have guessed by my reference to the fact that the workers will be paid a lower wage, I feel that in the rare cases in which the larger institutions do intervene, the result is often a gain for the institution and a loss for the individual.
So what does the sociological imagination lead us to as the possible solution? Mills (1959) states "The first fruits of this Imagination - and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it - is the idea that the individual can understand her own experience and gauge her own fate only by locating herself within her period, that she can know her own chances in life only by becoming aware of all the individuals in her circumstances"(page 5). That is, that we can only fully understand ourselves by examining our personal history in light of the history of the time in which we live, and then only as a reflection in the mirror provided by those who share our circumstances. This, I believe, is what makes the rugged individual myth so poisonous. That it seeks to separate us from the very mechanism by which we can judge rationally what our personal history is about and how we can resolve the problems we face.
Mills (1959) goes on to state "We have come to know that every Individual lives, from one generation to the next, in some society; that he lives out a biography, and lives it out within some historical sequence. By the fact of this living, he contributes, however minutely, to the shaping of this society and to the course of its history, even as he is made by society and by its historical push and shove" (page 5). While I agree that the individuals ability to shape the society is small, I believe that through use of concepts like the sociological imagination we can form, to paraphrase Freud, a collective conscious. By that I mean that if we can get beyond the normal day to day troubles, we can gain insight from each other into how to go about solving the seemingly intractable problems associated with the public issues of social structure. In so doing I believe we will then solve many, if not all, of the personal troubles of milieu.
Read, Think, Speak, Write, Be!
References
Mills, C. Wright (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.
"Mills, Charles Wright." (1999, December 2) The Handbook of Texas Online.