Thus their power is rooted in authority, an attribute of social organizations, not of individuals. The bureaucracies of state, corporations, and military have become enlarged and centralized and are a means of power never before equaled in human history.
These hierarchies of power are the key to understanding modern industrial societies. For these hierarchies are the very basis of power, wealth and prestige in modern times.
By asserting that there is a power elite in American society, Mills is not asserting that there is a self-conscious ruling class who is cynically manipulating the masses. It is not a conspiracy of evil men, he argues, but a social structure that has enlarged and centralized the decision-making process and then placed this authority in the hands of men of similar social background and outlook , pp.
All other institutions have diminished in scope and power and been either pushed to the side of modern history, or made subordinate to the big three. Schools, he asserts, have become appendages of corporations and government, sorting and training young people for their corporate careers, and in so doing inculcating patriotism, respect for authority, and the glories of capitalism along the way.
Families are still major socialization agents of the young, but they now share this function with schools and the mass media , p.
Through the socialization process, each of us has come to embrace and internalize the system as it is. A general consensus of what is right and natural, good and just, valued and reviled is forged. The interests of the elites become our interests, they become internalized and legitimized. It is their similar social backgrounds that provide one of the major sources of unity among the elite.
The majority of the elite, Mills asserted, come from the upper third of the income and occupational pyramids. They are born of the same upper class. They attend the same preparatory schools and Ivy League universities.
They join the same exclusive gentleman's clubs, belong to the same organizations. They are closely linked through intermarriage. It is these common experiences and role expectations that produce men of similar character and values , p.
Mills contends that coordination between government and corporations does not just depend on private clubs or being from the same social class. Some of the coordination comes from the interchange of personnel between the three elite hierarchies. The closeness of business and government officials can be seen, Mills asserts, by the ease and frequency with which men pass from one hierarchy to another , p.
Mills also asserted that a good deal of the coordination comes from a growing structural integration of dominant institutions. As each of the elite domains becomes larger, more centralized, and more consequential in its activities, its integration with the other spheres becomes more pronounced.
Government, military, and economic decisions become increasingly coordinated and inter-linked. There becomes an unstated structured bias of government and corporate leaders toward one another's interests. National governments are held accountable for the health of their economies. Economies rely on the production of military weapons and the projection of military power. There is an increasing convergence of the interests of the elite , pp.
Of the three sectors of institutional power, Mills claims, the corporate sector is the most powerful. But the power elite cannot be understood as a mere reflection of economic elites; rather it is the alliance of economic, political, and military power. Below the power elite, Mills saw two other levels of power in American society. At the bottom are the great masses of people. Largely unorganized, ill informed, and virtually powerless, they are controlled and manipulated from above.
The masses are economically dependent, they are economically and politically exploited. Because they are disorganized, the masses are far removed from the classic democratic public in which voluntary organizations hold the key to power , pp. Between the masses and the elite Mills saw a middle level of power. Composed of local opinion leaders and special interest groups, they neither represent the masses nor have any real effect on the elite. Mills saw the American Congress and American political parties as a reflection of this middle-level of power.
Although Congress and political parties debate and decide some minor issues, the power elite ensures that no serious challenge to its authority and control is tolerated in the political arena , p. The liberal theory of government as the result of a moving balance of forces depends upon an assumption of truly independent units of roughly equal power.
And this assumption, according to Mills, rested upon the existence of a large and independent middle class. However, the old independent middle class declined with the small businessman, the true independent professional, and the family farm. Moreover, it has been replaced by the rise of a new class of white collar workers and quasi professionals dependent upon large corporate, government, and military bureaucracy.
The new middle class is in the same economic position as the wage worker, dependent upon the large organization. Politically, they are in worse condition for they are not even represented by labor unions , p. The clash between competing interests occurs at the middle level of power, but it is mainly the clash over a slice of the existing pie. It is this clash that is written about by the political commentators and political scientists, but it is far removed from any clash and debate over fundamental policy.
Even here, Mills asserts, the clash between competing interests becomes muted as these interests increasingly become integrated into the apparatus of the state. Bureaucratic administration replaces politics, the maneuvering of cliques replaces the open clash of parties.
The process of integrating previously autonomous political forces such as labor, professional organizations, and farmers into the modern state is overt in modern totalitarianism. In the formal democracies the process is much less advanced and explicit, yet it is still well under way.
These interest groups increasingly maneuver within and between the political parties and organs of the state seeking to become a part of the state. Their chief desire is to maintain their organizations and to secure for their members maximum economic advantage , p.
The middle level of power thus does little to question the rule of the elite; nor does it seek any benefit for the great masses of men and women outside of their organization. In those societies in which power is diffuse and decentralized, history is the result of innumerable decisions by numerous men. All contribute to eventual changes in social structure. In such societies, no one individual or small group has much control, history moves "behind men's backs.
The positions of the elite allow them to transcend the ordinary environments of men and women. The elite have access to levers of power that make their decisions as well as their failure to act consequential.
In a society in which structural institutions have become enlarged, centralized, and all encompassing, who controls those institutions becomes the central issue of our time. One important consequence of this fact, Mills asserts, is that leaders of the modern nation state can exert much more coordination and control over the actions of that state. To date, Mills fears, these leaders are acting or failing to act with irresponsibility, thus leading us to disaster.
But this does not mean that it always must be so. The great structural change that has enlarged the means and extent of power and concentrated it in so few hands now makes it imperative to hold these men responsible for the course of events , p. By , Mills seemed much more concerned with the rise of militarism among the elites than with the hypothesis that many elites were military men.
According to Mills, the rise of the military state serves the interests of the elite of industrial societies , pp. For the politician the projection of military power serves as a cover for their lack of vision and innovative leadership. For corporate elites the preparations for war and the projection of military power underwrites their research and development as well as provides a guarantee of stable profits through corporate subsidies , p.
This militarism is inculcated in the population through school room and pulpit patriotism, through manipulation and control of the news, through the cultivation of opinion leaders and unofficial ideology. But it is not just the existence of a power elite that has allowed this manufactured militarism to dominate.
It has also been enabled by the apathy and moral insensibility of the masses and by the political inactivity of intellectuals in both communist and capitalist countries. Most intellectual, scientific, and religious leaders are echoing the elaborate confusions of the elite. They are refusing to question elite policies, they are refusing to offer alternatives.
They have abdicated their role, they allow the elite to rule unhindered , pp. Mass Society One of the great unifiers of life and character in the U. Mass communications, according to Mills, serves to mold modern consciousness and political thought , p. Mills goes on to point out that there were no mass media to speak of in Marx's day, so its influence would be easy to overlook. But in the modern world, he asserts, the form and content of political and social consciousness cannot be understood without reference to the image of the world presented by these media.
What a person comes to believe about a whole range of issues is a function of his experience, his first-hand contact with others, and his exposure to the mass media. In this, Mills asserts, the media is often the one that is decisive. The mass media are now the common denominator of American consciousness. They extend across all social environments, now even directly reaching out to mold the consciousness of children.
Contents and images in the media have become a part of our self-image, and will over the next few generations modify the very character of man , p. Mills is not writing simply of the news and the explicit political content of the mass media.
This, he claims, characterizes but a small portion of the fare served up to the American people on a daily basis.
Rather, Mills is focused on the rapidly growing entertainment and marketing industries. The mass marketing of consumer products, which sponsors these attractions, is also a recent phenomenon that has a profound impact on the consciousness of men and women , p.
The role of the salesman has shifted in a society that is threatened by a glut of consumer goods. Mass production has meant an increasing need to distribute goods to national markets. Before mass production and the consequent need to move product, salesmanship meant knowledge of a product and providing that information to the potential buyer.
Ad-men and psychologists attempt to improve their techniques of persuading people to buy , Persuasion, according to Mills, becomes a style of life for all types of relationships--marketers selling their products, entrepreneurs selling their ideas, campaign managers selling their candidates, employees selling themselves. The culture of selling has become so ingrained in the American psyche that it has become an "all-pervasive atmosphere," we have turned America into the "biggest bazaar" in the history of the world , pp This "Big Bazaar," Mills asserts, is as important in understanding modern life as the family or the factory.
Like the family, it feeds, clothes, amuses, supplying all necessities and creating in us additional "needs. While success has always been a driving force in American society, the confusion of success with mere consumption has made it a "dubious motive," and emptied it of real meaning as a way of life , p. Rationalization But what is at the root of the enlargement and centralization of structural bureaucracies in the modern world? Mills answers this question clearly and repeatedly, the rationalization of the world is the master trend of our time.
The key to power in the modern world is social organization and technological development. The means of production are now organized to maximize efficiency, and in that cause bureaucracies have become ever more encompassing, work ever more alienating, and culture ever more exploitive.
As applied to work in industrial-bureaucratic societies, rationalization has led to jobs that have been reduced to standardized and thus easily repeatable movements and decision making in accordance with written rules and regulations. While rationalization has led to the unprecedented increase in both the production and distribution of goods and services, it is also associated with depersonalization, a loss of personal control over the work tasks, and oppressive routine.
The process of rationalization is not restricted to the office, it permeates all areas of social life. Mills saw American farmers being rapidly polarized into two groups.
The first, he characterized as small subsistence farmers and wage-workers. The second, as big commercial farmers and rural corporations , p. Behind this movement toward ever-increasing farm size or consequent bankruptcy, of course, stood the machine.
The world of the corporate farmer is becoming more and more interdependent with the world of finance, business, and government. These bureaucracies carry the rationalization of the farm forward , pp.
While Mills recognized that the rationalization of the farm had a ways to go before it was complete, it had already destroyed the rural way of life. Farming, he wrote, was becoming more and more like any other industry. The "family farm" a nostalgic term used provide an "ideological veil" for large business interests , p. Science in the U. From the start, science in America has been identified closely with its technological products and its techniques.
Both are part of a seriously accepted unity. Second, a good scholar must keep a file. This file is a compendium of personal, professional, and intellectual experiences. Third, a good intellectual engages in continual review of thoughts and experiences. Fourth, a good intellectual may find a truly bad book as intellectually stimulating and conducive to thinking as a good book.
Fifth, there must be an attitude of playfulness toward phrases, words, and ideas. Along with this attitude one must have a fierce drive to make sense out of the world. Sixth, the imagination is stimulated by assuming a willingness to view the world from the perspective of others. Seventh, one should not be afraid , in the preliminary stages of speculation, to think in terms of imaginative extremes.
Eighth, one should not hesitate to express ideas in language which is as simple and direct as one can make it. Ideas are affected by the manner of their expression.
An imagination which is encased in deadening language will be a deadened imagination. Mills identified five overarching social problems in American society: 1 Alienation; 2 Moral insensibility; 3 Threats to democracy; 4 Threats to human freedom; and 5 Conflict between bureaucratic rationality and human reason. Like Marx, Mills views the problem of alienation as a characteristic of modern society and one that is deeply rooted in the character of work.
Unlike Marx, however, Mills does not attribute alienation to capitalism alone. While he agrees that much alienation is due to the ownership of the means of production, he believes much of it is also due to the modern division of labor. One of the fundamental problems of mass society is that many people have lost their faith in leaders and are therefore very apathetic. Such people pay little attention to politics. Mills characterizes such apathy as a "spiritual condition" which is at the root of many of our contemporary problems.
Throughout the early phases of his career, his sentiment and involvement in American politics grew, he wanted to understand how these institutions functioned and how they would affect society.
He was also concerned with the roles and responsibilities of intellectuals post the Second World War era in the United States of America. Mills advocated the public and political engagement over disinterested observations; he urged them to take a stand against the government to keep them in check. Weber made Mills draw a significant comparison between the European ideology and the American ideology; he saw the similarities and tried to make due for his own observations.
He based his books on his observations of the society which he resided in and spread the awareness throughout his life. He wants people to observe connections between individuals and their everyday life; he further urges them to observe how the greater social forces have an effect on their everyday life.
He urges the common folk to understand their contemporary lives and social structure in the historical context and possibly a study for the near future. Through his books he wanted the common folk to understand the issues which they had in their everyday life may be traced back to the government itself. The concept of sociological imagination enables an individual to attain a wider understanding of the society through the contexts of history which explain the way things have been and might be an indicator of what things can be.
All individuals residing in smaller groups throughout their lives; they see the society within their groups and in turn possess a very limited understanding of the same. Wright Mills in to describe the ability to understand how our lives are affected by the historical and sociological changes around us. In order to possess the knowledge of sociological imagination, we should be able to pull away from the current situation and be able to look and think from a different perspective.
This allows you to grasp relationships between your own personal self along with society and history. By doing this it allows you. Sociological imagination according to C. Mills wants people to be able to use sociological imagination to see things in a sociology point of view, so they can know the difference between personal troubles versus personal issues.
The term sociological imagination was developed by American sociologist C.
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