Social Problems and The Sociological Imagination: A Paradigm for Analysis

Designed for use as a supplementary social problems text at the undergraduate level, this book analyzes social problems using the paradigm of C. Wright Mills' "sociological imagination", focusing on the relationship between personal troubles and public issues affecting the society at large. After describing the major problems of American society and grounding the reader in the fundamentals of the sociological imagination, the author centers each chapter around one of the basic concepts of the paradigm (structure, biography and alienation, historical main drift, ideology, and social change). Each chapter contains two exercises, one short, the other long, which teach students how to develop a sociological imagination. Created to be fun and interesting, most involve content analysis and the study of the mass media. While other texts discuss the sociological imagination, no other text applies it systematically.