The Sociological Imagination, The Promise
To begin chapter one of The Sociological Imagination, ‘The Promise’, Mills explains the state of the everyday man during the 1950s. He describes this state as one of both imprisonment and helplessness.
On one hand, men are restrained by the habit of their own lives: they go to their job and are an operative, and then are a family-man once they arrive home. There are many restricted jobs that men carry-out, and a look at man’s everyday life shows that men cycle through these different jobs. However, men are also helpless in the face of greater and universal political situations which they cannot themselves manage.
In the 1950s, chased by anxieties over nuclear warfare and pressures between the United States and the Soviet Union in the
On one hand, men are restrained by the habit of their own lives: they go to their job and are an operative, and then are a family-man once they arrive home. There are many restricted jobs that men carry-out, and a look at man’s everyday life shows that men cycle through these different jobs. However, men are also helpless in the face of greater and universal political situations which they cannot themselves manage.
In the 1950s, chased by anxieties over nuclear warfare and pressures between the United States and the Soviet Union in the