The Criminological Imagination
The origins of the criminological imagination lay with C. Wright Mills and his book ‘The Sociological Imagination’. The book was first published back in 1959 and it continues to be published today. Tom Hayden describes Mills as the “sociologist’s sociologist” (Young 2001) and is a key figure and role model in the field of sociological sciences. Todd Gitlin described Mills as the “most inspiring sociologist of the second half of the twentieth century” (Gitlin 2000). The sociological imagination entails
“a quality of mind that that seems most dramatically to promise an understanding of the intimate realties of ourselves in connection with larger social realities … and allows the possessor to continually work out and revise views of the problems of history, the problems of biography, and the problems of social structure in which biography and history intersect” (Mills 1959 pg 15 and 225).
The sociological imagination signified a brand new way of looking at and interpreting the world around us (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007). It looks at the problems in society, the problems that they cause and how we can find a way to resolve them. This new idea provided by Mills, examines and gives an understanding of a person’s biography within history. For Mills this was the key nature of the sociological imagination (Young 2011). However, no individual’s biography couldn’t be taken out of the historical contexts it was in. This demanded the present need to be understood in order to connect with the ways in which the phenomena under scrutiny had been produced and reproduced. Taking Mills idea of the sociological imagination, the biography of individual’s remains important but you must also understand that an individual’s behaviour cannot be detached from their historical and material contexts (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007).
Mills critically challenged the dominant functionalist orthodoxy within criminology that existed in post-war criminology (Scraton
“a quality of mind that that seems most dramatically to promise an understanding of the intimate realties of ourselves in connection with larger social realities … and allows the possessor to continually work out and revise views of the problems of history, the problems of biography, and the problems of social structure in which biography and history intersect” (Mills 1959 pg 15 and 225).
The sociological imagination signified a brand new way of looking at and interpreting the world around us (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007). It looks at the problems in society, the problems that they cause and how we can find a way to resolve them. This new idea provided by Mills, examines and gives an understanding of a person’s biography within history. For Mills this was the key nature of the sociological imagination (Young 2011). However, no individual’s biography couldn’t be taken out of the historical contexts it was in. This demanded the present need to be understood in order to connect with the ways in which the phenomena under scrutiny had been produced and reproduced. Taking Mills idea of the sociological imagination, the biography of individual’s remains important but you must also understand that an individual’s behaviour cannot be detached from their historical and material contexts (Barton, Corteen, Scott, and Whyte 2007).
Mills critically challenged the dominant functionalist orthodoxy within criminology that existed in post-war criminology (Scraton
Bibliography: Barton, A., Corteen, K., Scott, D. and Whyte, D. (eds) (2006) Expanding the Criminological Imagination Devon: Willan Carrabine, E., Cox, P., Lee, M., Plummer, K. and South, N. (2009) Criminology: A Sociological introduction: Routledge Cohen, S. (1988) Against Criminology Cambridge: Polity Press Mills, C.W. (1959) The sociological Imagination Oxford: OUP Scraton, P. (2007) Power, Conflict and Criminalisation London: Routledge Swaaningen, R. (1997) Critical Criminology: Visions from Europe, London: Sage Young, J. (2011) Criminological Imagination Cambridge: Polity