documentc

C. Wright Mills

Born Charles Wright Mills

August 28, 1916

Waco, Texas

Died March 20, 1962 (aged 45)

West Nyack, New York[1]

Alma mater Texas A&M University; University of

Texas at Austin; University of

Wisconsin–Madison

Occupation Political sociologist

Known for The Sociological Imagination

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962)was an American sociologist, and a professor of sociology atColumbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Millswas published widely in popular and intellectual journals,and is remembered for several books, among them ThePower Elite, which introduced that term and describes therelationships and class alliances among the U.S. political,military, and economic elites; White Collar, on the Americanmiddle class; and The Sociological Imagination, where Millsproposes the proper relationship in sociological scholarshipbetween biography and history.

Mills was concerned with the responsibilities of intellectualsin post-World War II society, and advocated public andpolitical engagement over uninterested observation. Millsbiographer Daniel Geary writes that his writings had a

"particularly significant impact on New Left social movements of the 1960s."[2] In fact, Mills popularized the

term "New Left" in the U.S. in a 1960 open letter, Letter to the New Left.[3]

1 Biography

2 Influences

3 Books

4 Legacy

5 Outlook

6 The C. Wright Mills Award

6.1 Recipients of the C. Wright Mills Award

7 See also

8 Footnotes

9 Further reading

9.1 Primary sources

10 External links

C. Wright Mills was born in Waco, Texas on August 28, 1916 and lived in Texas until he was twenty-three years

old.[1] His father, Charles Grover Mills, worked as an insurance salesman while his mother,Frances Wright

C. Wright Mills - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Wright_Mills

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Mills, stayed at home as a housewife.[1][4] His family moved constantly when he was growing up and as a

result, he lived a relatively isolated life with few continuous relationships.[5] Mills graduated from Dallas

Technical High School in 1934.[6] He initially attended Texas A&M University but left after his first year andsubsequently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1939 with a bachelor's degree in sociologyand a master's degree in philosophy. By the time he graduated, Mills had already been published in the twoleading sociology journals in the U.S., the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of

Sociology.[7]

While studying at Texas, Mills met his first wife, Dorothy Helen Smith, who was also a student there. Aftertheir marriage in 1937 Dorothy Helen, or "Freya," worked to support the couple while Mills completed hisgraduate work, and typed and copy edited much of his work, including his Ph.D. dissertation. They weremarried in October 1937. In August 1939, the couple moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he entered thedoctoral program in sociology and met Hans Gerth, a professor there. Mills did not take any classes with Gerth.Freya divorced Mills in August 1940, but the couple remarried in March 1941, and their daughter, Pamela, is

born on January 15, 1943.[1]

Mills received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1942. His dissertation was

entitled "A Sociological Account of Pragmatism: An Essay on the Sociology of Knowledge."[8] Mills refused torevise his dissertation while it was reviewed, and it was later accepted without approval from the review

committee.[9] Mills left Wisconsin in early 1942 upon being appointed Professor of Sociology at the Universityof Maryland, College Park.

In 1945, Mills moved to New York after securing a research associate position at Columbia University's Bureauof Applied Social Research. Mills separated from Freya with the move, and the couple was divorced in 1947.

Mills was appointed Assistant Professor in the University's sociology department in 1946.[10]

In the mid-1940s while still at Maryland, Mills began contributing 'journalistic sociology' and opinion pieces tointellectual journals such as The New Republic, The New Leader, and Politics, the journal established by his

friend Dwight Macdonald in 1944.[11][12]

1946 saw publication of From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, a translation of essays by Weber co-authored

with one of Mills' mentors and friends at Wisconsin, Hans Gerth.[13] In 1953, the two published a second work,

Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions.[14]

In 1947, Mills married his second wife, Ruth Harper, a Bureau of Applied Social Research statistician whoworked with Mills on New Men of Power (1948), White Collar (1951), and The Power Elite (1956). In 1949,Mills and Ruth went to Chicago so that Mills could serve as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago;Mills returned to teaching at Columbia after a semester at the University of Chicago and was promoted toAssociate Professor of Sociology on July 1, 1950. Their daughter, Katherine, was born on July 14, 1955. Millswas promoted to Professor of Sociology at Columbia on July 1, 1956. From 1956-57, the family moved toCopenhagen, where Mills acted as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. Mills and Harper

separated in December 1957 when Mills returned from Copenhagen alone, and divorced in 1959.[1]

Mills married his third wife, Yaroslava Surmach, an American artist of Ukrainian descent, and settled in

Rockland County, New York in 1959. Their son, Nikolas Charles, was born on June 19, 1960.[1]

Mills was described as a man in a hurry, and aside from his hurried nature, he was largely known for hiscombativeness. Both his private life, with three marriages, a child from each, and several affairs, and his


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professional life, which involved challenging and criticizing many of his professors and coworkers, arecharacterized as "tumultuous". He wrote a fairly obvious, though slightly veiled, essay in criticism of the formerchairman of the Wisconsin department, and called the senior theorist there, Howard Becker, a "real fool". Onone special occasion when Mills was honored during a visit to the Soviet Union as a major critic of Americansociety, he criticized censorship in the Soviet Union through his toast to an early Soviet leader was, "purged andmurdered by the Stalinists," saying, "To the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published in the

Soviet Union!"[4]

Mills suffered from a series of heart attacks throughout his life and his fourth[4] and final attack lead to his death

on March 20, 1962.[15]

C. Wright Mills was heavily influenced by pragmatism, specifically the work of George Mead and John Dewey.The social structure aspects of Mills' works is largely shaped by Max Weber and the writing of Karl Mannheim,who followed Weber's work closely. Mills also acknowledged a general influence of Marxism; he noted thatMarxism had become an essential tool for sociologists and therefore all must naturally be educated on thesubject; any Marxist influence was then a result of sufficient education. Neo-Freudianism also helped shape

Mills' work.[16]

From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946) was edited and translated in collaboration with Hans Gerth.[1]

The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (1948) studies the "Labor Metaphysic" and the dynamic oflabor leaders cooperating with business officials. The book concludes that labour had effectively renounced itstraditional oppositional role and become reconciled to life within a capitalist system. Appeased by "bread andbutter" economic policies, unions had adopted, Mills argued, a pliantly subordinate role in the new structure ofAmerican power.

The Puerto Rican Journey (1950) was written in collaboration with Clarence Senior and Rose Kohn Goldsen. It

documents a methodological study and does not address theoretical sociological framework.[1][16]

White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951) offers a rich historical account of the middle class(es) in theUnited States and contends that bureaucracies have overwhelmed middle-class workers, robbing them of allindependent thought and turning them into near-automatons, oppressed but cheerful. Mills states there are three

types of power within the workplace: coercion or physical force; authority; and manipulation.[17] Through thispiece, the thoughts of Mills and Weber seem to coincide in their belief that Western Society is trapped withinthe iron cage of bureaucratic rationality, which would lead society to focus more on rationality and less on

reason.[17] Mills' fear was that the middle-class was becoming "politically emasculated and culturally stultified"

which would allow a shift in power from the middle-class to the strong social elite.[18] Middle-class workersreceive an adequate salary but have become alienated from the world because of their inability to affect orchange it.

Character and Social Structure (1953) was co-authored with Hans Gerth. This was considered his mosttheoretically sophisticated work. Mills later came into conflict with Gerth, though Gerth positively referred tohim as, "an excellent operator, a whippersnapper, promising young man on the make, and Texas cowboy á la


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ride and shoot."[4] Generally speaking, Character and Social Structure combines the social behaviorism andpersonality structure of pragmatism with the social structure of Weberian sociology. It is centralized around

roles; how they are interpersonal and how they are related to institutions.[16]

The Power Elite (1956) describes the relationships among the political, military, and economic elites, notingthat they share a common world view; that power rests in the centralization of authority within the elites of

society.[17] This centralization of authority is made up of the following components: a "military metaphysic," inother words a military definition of reality; "class identity," recognizing themselves as separate from andsuperior to the rest of society; "interchangeability," i.e., they move within and between the three institutionalstructures and hold interlocking positions of power therein; cooperation/socialization, in other words,socialization of prospective new members is done based on how well they "clone" themselves socially afteralready established elites. Mills' view on the power elite is that they represent their own interest, which includemaintaining a "permanent war economy" to control the ebbs and flow of American Capitalism and the masking

of "a manipulative social and political order through the mass media."[18]

The Causes of World War Three (1958) and Listen, Yankee (1960) are considered Mills' weakest work. In both,

he attempts to create a moral voice for society and make the power elite responsible to the "public".[1][16]

The Sociological Imagination (1959), which is considered Mills' most influential book,[19] describes a mindsetfor studying sociology — the sociological imagination — that stresses being able to connect individualexperiences and societal relationships. The three components that form the sociological imagination are:

History: why society is what it is and how it has been changing for a long time and how history is being

made in it

1.

Biography: the nature of "human nature" in a society; what kinds of people inhabit a particular society2.

Social Structure: how the various institutional orders in a society function, which ones are dominant, how

they are kept together, how they might be changing too, etc.

3.

Mills asserts that a critical task for social scientists is to "translate private troubles into public issues," which is

something that it is very difficult for ordinary citizens to do.[20] The distinction between troubles and issues isthat troubles relate to a single person while issues refers to a group of people. For instance, man who cannotfind employment is experiencing a trouble while a city with a massive unemployment rate is experiencing an

issue. [21] Sociologists, then, rightly connect their autobiographical, personal challenges to social institutions.Social scientists should then connect those institutions to social structure(s) and locate them within a historicalnarrative.

The version of Images of Man: The Classic Tradition in Sociological Thinking (1960) worked on by C. Wright

Mills is simply an edited copy with the addition of an introduction written himself.[1] Through this work, Millsexplains that he believes the use of models is the characteristic of classical sociologists, and that these models

are the reason classical sociologists maintain relevance.[16]

The Marxists (1962) takes Mills' explanation of sociological models from Images of Man and uses it to criticizeliberalism and Marxism. He believes that the liberalist model does not work and cannot create an overarchingview of society, but rather that it is more of an ideology for the entrepreneurial middle class. Marxism, however,may be incorrect in its overall view, but does have a working model for societal structure, the mechanics of thehistory of society, and the roles of individuals. One of Mills' problems with the Marxist model is that it usesunits that are small and autonomous, which he finds too simple to explain capitalism. Mills then provides


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discussion on Marx as a determinist.[16]

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes dedicated his novel The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) to Mills, "true voice ofNorth America, friend and companion in the struggle of Latin America."

There has long been debate over Mills' intellectual outlook. Mills is often seen as a "closet Marxist" because ofhis emphasis on social classes and their roles in historical progress and attempt to keep Marxist traditions alivein social theory. Just as often however, others argue that Mills more closely identified with the work of MaxWeber, whom many sociologists interpret as an exemplar of sophisticated (and intellectually adequate)anti-Marxism and modern liberalism. However, Mills clearly gives precedence to social structure described bythe political, economic and military institutions and not culture, which is presented in its massified form asmeans to ends sought by the power elite, which puts him firmly in the Marxist and not Weberian camp, so muchthat in his collection of classical essays, Weber's Protestant Ethic is not included. Weber's idea of bureaucracy asinternalized social control was embraced by Mills as was the historicity of his method, yet far from liberalism(being its critic), Mills was a radical who was culturally forced to distance himself from Marx while being"near" him.

While Mills never embraced the "Marxist" label, he told his closest associates that he felt much closer to whathe saw as the best currents of flexible, humanist Marxism than to its alternatives. He considered himself as a"plain Marxist" working in the spirit of young Marx as he claims in his collected essays: "Power, Politics andPeople" (Oxford University Press, 1963). In a November 1956 letter to his friends Bette and Harvey Swados,

Mills declared "[i]n the meantime, let's not forget that there's more [that's] still useful in even the Sweezy[22]

kind of Marxism than in all the routineers of J. S. Mill [23] put together."

There is an important quotation from Letters to Tovarich (autobiographical essay) dated Fall 1957 titled "OnWho I Might Be and How I Got That Way":

You've asked me, 'What might you be?' Now I answer you: 'I am a Wobbly.' I mean thisspiritually and politically. In saying this I refer less to political orientation than to political ethos,and I take Wobbly to mean one thing: the opposite of bureaucrat. […] I am a Wobbly,personally, down deep, and for good. I am outside the whale, and I got that way through socialisolation and self-help. But do you know what a Wobbly is? It's a kind of spiritual condition.Don't be afraid of the word, Tovarich. A Wobbly is not only a man who takes orders fromhimself. He's also a man who's often in the situation where there are no regulations to fall backupon that he hasn't made up himself. He doesn't like bosses –capitalistic or communistic – theyare all the same to him. He wants to be, and he wants everyone else to be, his own boss at alltimes under all conditions and for any purposes they may want to follow up. This kind of

spiritual condition, and only this, is Wobbly freedom.[24]

These two quotations are the ones chosen by Kathryn Mills for the better acknowledgement of the nuancedthinking of C.W.Mills.

It appears that Mills understood his position as being much closer to Marx than to Weber, albeit influenced by


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both, as Stanley Aronowitz argued in A Mills Revival?.[25] Mills argues that micro and macro levels of analysiscan be linked together by the sociological imagination, which enables its possessor to understand the largehistorical sense in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.Individuals can only understand their own experiences fully if they locate themselves within their period ofhistory. The key factor is the combination of private problems with public issues: the combination of troublesthat occur within the individual’s immediate milieu and relations with other people with matters that have to dowith institutions of an historical society as a whole. Mills shares with Marxist sociology and other "conflicttheorists" the view that American society is sharply divided and systematically shaped by the relationshipbetween the powerful and powerless. He also shares their concerns for alienation, the effects of social structureon the personality, and the manipulation of people by elites and the mass media. Mills combined suchconventional Marxian concerns with careful attention to the dynamics of personal meaning and small-groupmotivations, topics for which Weberian scholars are more noted.

Mills had a very combative outlook regarding and towards many parts of his life, the people in it, and his works.In this way, he was a self-proclaimed outsider.

I am an outlander, not only regionally, but deep down and for good.[26]

C. Wright Mills gave considerable study to the Soviet Union. Invited to the U.S.S.R., where he wasacknowledged for his criticism of American society, Mills used the opportunity to attack Soviet censorship. Hedid hold the controversial notion that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were ruled by similar bureaucratic power elitesand thus were convergent rather than divergent societies.

Above all, Mills understood sociology, when properly approached, as an inherently political endeavor and aservant of the democratic process. In The Sociological Imagination, Mills wrote:

It is the political task of the social scientist -- as of any liberal educator – continually to translatepersonal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning fora variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work – and, as an educator, in his life aswell -- this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits ofmind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is tosecure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic

society.[20]

Contemporary American scholar Cornel West argued in his text American Evasion of Philosophy that C. WrightMills follows the tradition of pragmatism. Mills shared Dewey's goal of a "creative democracy" and emphasison the importance of political practice but criticized Dewey for his inattention to the rigidity of power structurein the U.S. Mills' dissertation was titled Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America, and Westcategorized him along with pragmatists in his time Sidney Hook and Reinhold Niebuhr as thinkers duringpragmatism's "mid-century crisis".

The Society for the Study of Social Problems established the C. Wright Mills Award in 1964 for the book that"best exemplifies outstanding social science research and a great understanding the individual and society in the

tradition of the distinguished sociologist, C. Wright Mills."[27] The criteria are for the book that most


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effectively:[28]

critically address an issue of contemporary public importance,1.

bring to the topic a fresh, imaginative perspective,2.

advance social scientific understanding of the topic,3.

display a theoretically informed view and empirical orientation,4.

evince quality in style of writing,5.

explicitly or implicitly contains implications for courses of action.6.

Recipients of the C. Wright Mills Award


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Year Name Book Title

2012 Cybelle FoxThree Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the AmericanWelfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal

2011 Shamus Rahman Khan Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School

2010 Mark HunterLove in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in SouthAfrica

2009 Mario Luis Small Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life

2008 Martín Sánchez-JankowskiCracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in PoorNeighborhoods

2007 Daniel Jaffee Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival

2006 Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor

2005 Pun Ngai Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace

2004 Mario Luis SmallVilla Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a BostonBarrio

2003 Sharon Hays Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform

2002 Co-Winner, Gordon Lafer The Job Training Charade

2002Co-Winner, David NaguibPellow

Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago

2001 Pierrette Hondagneu-SoteloDoméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadowsof Affluence

2000 Michèle LamontThe Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race,Class, and Immigration

1999 Mitchell Duneier Sidewalk

1998 Monica J. CasperThe Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of FetalSurgery

1997 John Hagan and Bill McCarthy Mean Streets: Youth Crime and Homelessness

1996 Steven Epstein Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge

1995 Co-Winner, Philippe Bourgois In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio

1995Co-Winner, Melvin L. Oliverand Thomas M. Shapiro

Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality

1994 Robert ThomasWhat Machines Can’t Do: Politics and Technology in the IndustrialEnterprise

1993 David WagnerCheckerboard Square: Culture and Resistance in a HomelessCommunity

1992 Roger N. LancasterLife is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power inNicaragua

1991 Sharon Zukin Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World


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1990 Patricia Hill CollinsBlack Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politicsof Empowerment

1989 Co-Winner, Douglas McAdam Freedom Summer

1989 Co-Winner, Alan Wolfe Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation

1988 Co-Winner, Ivan Szelenyi Socialist Entrepreneurs: Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary

1988 Co-Winner, John SuttonStubborn Children: Controlling Delinquency in the United States,1640-1981

1987 William J. WilsonThe Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, and PublicPolicy

1986 Co-Winner, Diana E. H. Russell The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women

1986 Co-Winner, Charles Tilly The Contentious French: Four Centuries of Popular Struggle

1986Co-Winner, Joyce Rothschildand J. Allen Whitt

The Cooperative Workplace: Potentials and Dilemmas ofOrganizational Democracy and Participation

1985 Viviana A. Zelizer Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children

1984 Co-Winner, Michael UseemThe Inner Circle: Large Corporations and the Rise of BusinessPolitical Activity in the U.S. and U.K.

1984 Co-Winner, Richard Madsen Morality and Power in a Chinese Village

1983 Manuel CastellsThe City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of UrbanSocial Movements

1982 Paul StarrThe Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of aSovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry

1981 Judith Lewis Herman Father-Daughter Incest

1980 Michael LipskyStreet Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in PublicServices

1979 Theda SkocpolStates and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France,Russia, and China

1978 Walter KorpiThe Working Class in Welfare Capitalism: Work, Unions and Politicsin Sweden

1977 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Men and Women of the Corporation

1976 Janice E. PerlmanThe Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio deJaneiro

1975 Mary O. FurnerAdvocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization ofAmerican Social Science

1974 Harry BravermanLabor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in theTwentieth Century

1973 Co-Winner, James B. RulePrivate Lives and Public Surveillance: Social Control in the ComputerAge

1973 Co-Winner, Isaac D. BalbusThe Dialectics of Legal Repression: Black Rebels before theAmerican Courts


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1972 David M. GordonTheories of Poverty and Underemployment: Orthodox, Radical andDual Labor Market Perspectives

1971Frances Fox Piven and RichardA. Cloward

Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare

1970 Jacqueline P. Wiseman Stations of the Lost: The Treatment of Skid Row Alcoholics

1969 Laud Humphreys Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places

1968 Gerald D. SuttlesThe Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the InnerCity

1967 Co-Winner, Elliott Liebow Tally’s Corner: A Study of Negro Street Corner Men

1967Co-Winner, Travis Hirschi andHanan C. Selvin

Delinquency Research: An Appraisal of Analytical Methods

1966 Jerome H. Skolnick Justice Without Trial

1965 Robert Boguslaw The New Utopians

1964 David Matza Delinquency and Drift

[29]

Military-industrial complex

^ a b c d e f g h i j Mills, C. Wright (2000). C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings. Berkeley and Los

Angeles, California: University of California Press. ISBN 0520211065.

1.

^ Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought (http://books.google.com.qa

/books?id=Z4yNnGJLHU8C&dq=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) By

Daniel Geary, p. 1.

2.

^ Letter to the New Left by C. Wright Mills 1960 (http://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills-c-wright/letter-

new-left.htm)

3.

^ a b c d Ritzer, George (2011). Sociological Theory. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. pp. 215–217.

ISBN 9780078111679.

4.

^ Crossman, Ashley. "C. Wright Mills" (http://sociology.about.com/od/Profiles/p/C-Wright-Mills.htm). The New

York Times Company. Retrieved 4 October 2012.

5.

^ Short biography of C. Wright Mills published in the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers in 3 volumes by

Thoemmes Press, Bristol, UK, 2004

6.

^ C Wright Mills An American Utopia (http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=tcIr4x7s49AC&

dq=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) By Irving Louis Horowitz, p. 40

7.


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^ C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings (http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=1ik9ZUywjcQC&

dq=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) By C. Wright Mills, Kathryn Mills,

Pamela Mills, Dan Wakefield, 2001, p. 77

8.

^ Darity, Jr., William A. (2008). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (http://go.galegroup.com

/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3045301564&v=2.1&u=mlin_c_collhc&it=r&p=GVRL&

sw=w&asid=0060a4d38ecd10471f0d68d01181481f). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 181–183.

9.

^ Daniel Geary (2009). Radical ambition: C. Wright Mills, the left and American social thought.

ISBN 0-520-25836-3. "In early 1946, he was appointed assistant professor at Columbia College"

10.

^ C Wright Mills An American Utopia (http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=tcIr4x7s49AC&

dq=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) By Irving Louis Horowitz, pp.

67–71

11.

^ TIME April 4, 1994 Volume 143, No. 14, "Biographical sketch of Dwight Macdonald" by John Elson

(http://karws.gso.uri.edu/JFK/History/WC_Period/Reactions_to_Warren_Report/Reactions_of_left

/Bio_of_Macdonald.html) (Accessed 4 December 2008)

12.




13.




14.

^ edited; Sica, with introductions by Alan (2005). Social thought : from the Enlightenment to the present. Boston:

Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 0-205-39437-X.

15.

^ a b c d e f Scimecca, Joseph A. (1977). The Sociological Theory of C. Wright Mills. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat

Press Corp. ISBN 080469155X.

16.

^ a b c Mann, Douglas (2007). Understanding society : a survey of modern social theory. Toronto: Oxford University

Press. ISBN 978-0-19-542184-2.

17.

^ a b The A–Z guide to modern social and political theorists. London: Prentice Hall, Harvester Wheatsheaf. 1997.

ISBN 0-13-524885-X.

18.

^ [1] (http://www.isa-sociology.org/books/vt/bkv_000.htm) The Sociological Imagination ranked second (outranked

only by Max Weber's Economy and Society) in a 1997 survey asking members of the International Sociological

Association to identify the books published in the 20th century most influential on sociologists

19.

^ a b [Mills, C Wright. THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION Fortieth Anniversary Edition. Oxford University

Press, 2000.]

20.

^ Mills, C. Wright (March 17, 2014). Garth Massey, ed. Readings For Sociology (Seventh Edition ed.). New York:

W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 13–18. ISBN 9780393912708.

21.

^ Paul M. Sweezy, founder of Monthly Review magazine, "an independent socialist magazine".22.

^ I.e., liberal intellectuals.23.


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^ From C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings, edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills,

introduction by Dan Wakefield (University of California Press, 2000.), pag.252. Wobblies are members of the

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the direct action they are favouring includes passive resistance, strikes,

and boycotts. They want to build a new society according to general socialist principles but they are refusing to

endorse any socialist party or any other kind of political party.

24.

^ "These perspectives owed as much to the methodological precepts of Emile Durkheim as they did to the critical

theory of Karl Marx and Max Weber. Using many of the tools of conventional social inquiry: surveys, interviews,

data analysis—charts included—Mills takes pains to stay close to the “data” until the concluding chapters. But what

distinguishes Mills from mainstream sociology, and from Weber, with whom he shares a considerable portion of his

intellectual outlook, is the standpoint of radical social change, not of fashionable sociological neutrality." A Mills

Revival? (http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm).

25.

^ Horowitz, Irving L. C. Wright Mills: An American Utopian. New York: Free Press, 1983.26.

^ "C. Wright Mills Award" (http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/253/). Society for the Study of Social Problems.

Retrieved 12 April 2012.

27.

^ "C. Wright Mills Award Committee" (http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/74/iv_the_committees_of_the_society/).

Society for the Study of Social Problems. Retrieved 12 April 2012.

28.

^ "C. Wright Mills Award Past Winners" (http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageid/122/m/335). The Society for the

Study of Social Problems. Retrieved 24 February 2014.

29.

Herbert Aptheker, The World of C. Wright Mills. New York: Marzani and Munsell, 1960.

Stanley Aronowitz, "A Mills Revival?" (http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm) Logos Journal,

Summer 2003.

Stanley Aronowitz. Taking It Big: C. Wright Mills and the Making of Political Intellectuals. New York:

Columbia University Press, 2012.

G. William Domhoff, "Mills's The Power Elite 50 Years Later," (http://sociology.ucsc.edu

/whorulesamerica/theory/mills_review_2006.html) Contemporary Sociology, November 2006.

Douglas F. Dowd, "On Veblen, Mills... And the Decline of Criticism," Dissent, vol. 11, no. 1 (Winter

1964), pp. 29–38.

John Eldridge, C. Wright Mills (Key Sociologists). Ellis Horwood, 1983.

Daniel Geary, "Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought." Berkeley,

CA: University of California Press 2009.

Geary, Daniel (2008). "‘Becoming International Again’: C. Wright Mills and the Emergence of a Global

New Left". Journal of American History 95 (3): 710–736. doi:10.2307/27694377 (http://dx.doi.org

/10.2307%2F27694377).

Irving Louis Horowitz, C. Wright Mills, an American Utopian (1983).

Tom Hayden with Contemporary Reflections by Stanley Aronowitz, Richard Flacks, and Charles Lemert,

Radical Nomad: C. Wright Mills and His Times. East Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.


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Keith Kerr. Postmodern Cowboy: C. Wright Mills and a New 21st Century Sociology. East Boulder, CO:

Paradigm Publishers, 2008.

Kevin Mattson, Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-1970.

University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.

A.J. Muste and Irving Howe, "C. Wright Mills' Program: Two Views," Dissent, vol. 6, no. 2 (Spring

1959), pp. 189–196.

Harvey Swados, "C. Wright Mills: A Personal Memoir," Dissent, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1963), pp. 35–42.

E.P. Thompson, "C. Wright Mills: The Responsible Craftsman," Radical America, vol. 13, no. 4

(July-Aug. 1979), pp. 60–73.

Rick Tilman, C. Wright Mills: A Native Radical and his American Roots. University Park, PA:

Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984.

A. Javier Trevino, The Social Thought of C. Wright Mills. Sage Publications, 2012.

Primary sources

Kathryn Mills (ed.) with Pamela Mills, C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings.

Introduction by Dan Wakefield. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.

Official website (http://www.cwrightmills.org)

The Power Elite-Full Book online (http://www.watchmenfaithministries.com/images/The_Power_Elite_-

_New_Edition__first_full-scale_study_of_structure_and_distribution_of_power_in_USA___2000_.pdf)

Frank Elwell's page at Rogers State (http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Mills/)

An interview with Mills's daughters, Kathryn and Pamela (http://www.monthlyreview.org

/1007dawson.htm)

Mills-On Intellectual Craftsmanship (http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~psargent/Mills_Intell_Craft.pdf)

Contemporary C.Wright Mills (http://www.asadi.org)

C.W Mills, Structure of Power in American Society,British Journal of Sociology,Vol.9.No.1 1958

(http://www.csub.edu/~akebede/SOC502Mills2.pdf)

A Mills Revival? (http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm)

C.Wright Mills, The Causes of World War Three (http://www.questia.com/library/book/the-causes-

of-world-war-three-by-c-wright-mills.jsp)

C.Wright Mills, Letter to the New Left (http://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills-c-wright/letter-

new-left.htm)

Sociology-Congress in Köln 2000 workshop: C. Wright Mills and his Power Elite: Actuality today?

(http://www.uni-muenster.de/PeaCon/dgs-mills/Millspage-info.htm)

John D Brewer, C.Wright Mills, the LSE and the sociological imagination [2] (http://www2.lse.ac.uk


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/CPNSS/events/Abstracts/C%20Wright%20Mills%20the%20LSE.pdf)

Daniel Geary (2009). Radical Ambition. C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought.

University of California Press. Chapter 6 [3] (http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/10339.ch06.pdf)

Daniel Geary in C.S.Soong's radio program Against the Grain (KPFA 94,1 MHz) on C.Wright Mills [4]

(http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/280/id/061509/wed-2-10-10-c-wright-mills-reconsidered)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=C._Wright_Mills&oldid=606793288"

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