Charles Wright Mills

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C. Wright Mills

Charles Wright Mills (as the author C. Wright Mills ; born August 28, 1916 in Waco , Texas , † March 20, 1962 in Nyack , New York ) was an American sociologist . He analyzed the power structures of modern societies and the role of intellectuals in post-war US society.

Mill's works are sociological classics of the sociology of domination and elite , especially power structure research , which, however, have hardly been received in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

His best-known works are Die Machtelite , in which he analyzes the interaction of the political, military and economic elites ; White Collar: The American Middle Classes examines the modern middle class; The Sociological Imagination represents the connection that exists between the subjective experience of the individual in his individual biography with the structure of society and the historical development of society.

In his work, Mills emphasizes the responsibility of the intellectual in post-war society. According to his biographer Daniel Geary, Mill's writings had a significant impact on the social movement of the New Left in the 1960s. Mills is said to have popularized the term "New Left" when he published his 1960 open letter to the New Left.

Life

Mills received his bachelor's degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1939 and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, Madison , where he received his PhD in 1941. From 1946 until his death, he worked at Columbia University , where he was involved in many controversies.

Mills undertook numerous extensive trips, which led him to Germany and the Soviet Union, among others. At the beginning of the 1960s he visited Cuba as one of the first Americans after the revolution.

A committed, critical and practical approach to sociology was characteristic of his academic career and of his entire life. There are three different phases:

  1. Study of social philosophy and reception of the sociological classics ( Karl Marx , Max Weber , Gaetano Mosca , Vilfredo Pareto );
  2. a period of intense empirical work;
  3. a union of both directions of interest to a certain working method of sociological reflection. From this grew his contribution Two Styles of Social Science Research ; later these ideas were elaborated on The Sociological Imagination .

Mills became famous with his trilogy on the investigation of power relations in the USA, in which he first described the working class ( The New Men of Power) in 1948 , then the American middle class ( White Collar: The American Middle Classes) in 1951 and finally the American one in 1956 power elite ( The power Elite ) analyzed in detail.

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From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946).

Mills began his collaboration with Hans Gerth in 1940, together they translated some of Weber's texts into English.

The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (1948)

Mills examines what is known as “Labor Metaphysic”, theories about the role of the labor movement and the way union leaders work with employers and managers. The conclusion is that trade unions have given up their opposition role and have reconciled themselves with life within the capitalist system. The workers were pacified by the "bread and butter" policy, in which political goals were excluded. The union leaders would have obediently subordinated themselves to the new regime and made the unions a "shock absorber" between employers and workers.

On the whole, Mills describes the unions as the only force that could bring about a renewal of society. A major role he has in this case the intellectuals in the union to, the official of the trade union bureaucracy, which slightly to the "whore of power" ( whore of power would), he does not expect any innovative impulses as they reach a reorientation of its activities in alliance with the intellectuals lose money, power, prestige and status.

Nelson Lichtenstein misses in his review of Mills, based on Weber's bureaucracy analysis, the explanation of how the special interests of the union leadership emerged, the representation of how intellectuals can mobilize the labor movement again and a lack of consideration of union history and the role of racism and sexism in the US.

The Puerto Rican Journey (1950)

The study was co-authored with Clarence Senior and Rose Kohn Goldsen. It is a study of the situation of immigrants from Puerto Rico in New York. In contrast to the work of empirical social research , the presentation is embedded in a seemingly literary story, since Mills believed that the problem of the integration of immigrants into the modern alienated society of the USA could not be statistically and empirically represented.

White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Mills has presented the "first, still up-to-date" macro-sociological "account of the alienation of that" middle "(...) for whose favor the" modern "politicians are still struggling to this day". It depicts the radically changed situation of the middle class in the USA in the post-war period. Mill's thesis is that the employees have been transformed by the bureaucracy of the large companies into mindless and content machines, whose identity is formed in the hierarchical network of function and title.

Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions (1953)

Mills wrote this font together with Hans Gerth . They examine the relationship between institutions and social structures and the character of individual persons. The central concept of the theoretical foundation in Chapter 2 is the social role that is formed in the relationship between institution and individual, which at the same time creates this and shapes the character of the person. The character of a person appears as the “relatively stable integration of the psychic structure of an organism in connection with the social roles of the person” (the relatively stabilized integration of the organism's psychic structure linked with the social roles of the person ) through repeated interactions with others ( recurrent interactions ) the patterns of mutually oriented conduct .

Institutions configure and stabilize roles through varying degrees of authority so that each role is understood and accepted as a guarantee of the relative duration of the overall behavioral pattern. In addition to the institutions in general, the social structure also includes the types of institutions (such as the political) and their spheres (such as the symbolic or technological). The main role in socialization is played by language, through which expectations, approval and disapproval are expressed, which shape the ascriptions of self-image .

Chapters 3 to 11 deal with the selection and shaping of individuals by institutions, with social control, the social contexts and functions of communication, social stratification and integration.

Chapters 12 to 15 deal with the dynamics of social change , leadership and collective behavior, Chapter 16 with the main directions of social development.

The Power Elite (1956)

The core of the trilogy on the classes of American society analyzes the relationships between the political, military and economic elites who share a common worldview: that power lies and should lie in the centralization of authority within social elites. This authority is based on a militarily defined reality, a superior class consciousness of the elite, the interchangeability and combinability of the elite structures (entrepreneur becomes politician, general economic advisor) and the recruitment of adapted climbers. The elite, in Mill's view, is guided only by self-interest, which includes maintaining a steady war economy to balance the ups and downs of the economy and masking a manipulative political and social order by the media.

The Causes of World War Three (1958) and Listen, Yankee (1960)

Both treatises are attempts to make clear the responsibility of the elite to the public. Listen, Yankee described the Cuban Revolution from the perspective of a revolutionary.

The Sociological Imagination (1959)

The considered as the most influential book Mills work describes the sociological attitude or approach to research, as a sociological imagination or imagination ( sociological imagination is called). This power of imagination consists in the ability to relate individual experiences from the perspective of a person to the determining factors of society and history, which are mostly hidden from the individual.

What is the social sciences about? They should, and sometimes do, deal with man and society. They strive to understand biography and history and their connections in a variety of social structures.

The work is a seminal review of sociological discipline in the United States in the 1950s. Mills takes a third path between the “mindless empiricism” of American social researchers and the “great theory” of Talcott Parsons . In Mills' view, a critical sociology is required that can neither be superficially instrumentalized nor theorized in a detached manner, but rather offers a connection between current living conditions and historical social structure. That, according to Mills, is the task and the "promise" of sociology. The Sociological Imagination (TSI) is still one of the most important self-criticisms in sociology today. The most important task of the sociologist is to “ translate private troubles into public issues ”. “Sociological imagination is the methodological state in which one has to put oneself with the help of theory and imaginative empiricism in order not only to suffer society, but to change it 'from below'. Sociology must make it possible to understand problems of one's own biography as products of historical change and as opportunities for social activity. ”For example, one's own unemployment is related to the economic situation and development of the country.

The German translation from 1963 is considered to be a “complete failure” due to the number of misrepresentations in the text.

Critical Conflict Theory

Mills advocated the thesis that a “good society” could be created on the basis of knowledge and that the educated people, the intellectual elite, were responsible for their failure.

The “sociological imagination” can use analyzes on a micro and a macro level to relate the careers of different individuals to one another, which enables an understanding of their importance for the inner life as well as for life outside. Individuals can only fully understand their own experience if they locate themselves in their historical context.

The key factor is the connection of private questions with the public: the connection of problems that arise in the individual's immediate environment and within his relationships with processes related to the institutions of a historically influenced society as a whole.

In a modern society, the centralization of power at the national level is closely tied to the people who lead governments, large corporations, the military and the trade unions. The means of power available to the central rulers have greatly increased. The American power elite consists of political, economic, and military leaders. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned the nation about gives a clear picture of the interdependence of these decision-makers.

Mills shares with Marxist-influenced sociologists and elite theorists that society is sharply divided vertically between those who are powerful and those without power or influence. He also shares the concern about alienation as an effect of social structures on the personality of the individual and the concern about the manipulation of people by the mass media . Still, Mills does not see property and economic power as the main source of conflict in society .

Fonts (selection)

  • Letters and autobiographical writings . Edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills, University of California Press, Berkeley 2000, ISBN 0-520-21106-5 .
  • The Marxists . Dell Pub. Co., New York 1962.
  • Listen, Yankee. The revolution in Cuba . McGraw-Hill, New York 1960.
  • Images of man. The classic tradition in sociological thinking . G. Braziller, New York 1960.
    • Classical Sociology. A polemical selection by C. Wright Mills . Translated by Gernot Gather, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1966.
  • The Sociological Imagination . Oxford University Press, New York 1959.
    • Critique of Sociological Thought . Translated by Albrecht Kruse, Luchterhand, Neuwied 1963.
    • Sociological imagination . Edited by Stephan Lessenich , translated by Ulrike Berger, Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-10015-5 .
  • The causes of World War Three . Simon and Schuster, New York 1958.
    • Politics without responsibility. An analysis . Translated by Paul Baudisch, Kindler, Munich 1963.
  • The Power Elite . Oxford University Press, New York 1956.
    • The American elite. Society and Power in the United States . Translated by Hans Stern, Heinz Neunes and Bernt Engelmann , Holsten-Verlag, Hamburg 1962.
    • The power elite . Edited by Björn Wendt, Michael Walter and Marcus B. Klöckner, Westend, Frankfurt am Main 2019, ISBN 978-3-86489-270-7 .
  • With Hans Gerth : Character and social structure. The psychology of social institutions . Brace, New York 1952.
  • White collar. The American middle classes . Oxford University Press, New York 1951.
    • Person and society. The psychology of social institutions . Translated by Ruth Meyer and Siegfried George with the help of Marion Ziemer, Athenäum-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / Bonn 1970.
    • People in the office . A contribution to the sociology of employees . Translated by Bernt Engelmann, Bund-Verlag, Cologne-Deutz 1955.
  • The new men of power. America's labor leaders . AM Kelley, New York 1948.

literature

  • Herbert Aptheker , The world of Wright Mills (reprint of New York 1960 edition), Kraus, Millwood, NY 1977
  • John D. Brewer, C. Wright Mills and the ending of violence , Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke [et al. a.] 2003
  • John Eldridge, C. Wright Mills, Key sociologist , 1983
  • Tom Hayden (with contemporary reflections by Stanley Aronowitz, Richard Flacks and Charles Lemert): Radical Nomad. C. Wright Mills and His Times , 2006, ISBN 1-59451-202-7 .
  • Andreas Hess, C. Wright Mills' political sociology. A contribution to the history of political ideas , Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1995, ISBN 3-8100-1353-6 .
  • Andreas Hess, C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) . In: Dirk Kaesler (Ed.), Classics of Sociology . Volume II: From Talcott Parsons to Anthony Giddens . 5th, revised, updated and expanded edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-42089-4 , pp. 180–196.
  • Irving Louis Horowitz , C. Wright Mills, an American Utopian , 1983, ISBN 0-02-915010-8 .
  • Kevin Mattson, Intellectuals in Action. The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-1970 , Penn State University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-271-02206-X .
  • Kathryn and Pamela Mills (Eds.): C. Wright Mills. Letters and Autobiographical Writings , 2000, ISBN 0-520-23209-7 .
  • Oliver Neun: On the topicality of C. Wright Mills. Introduction to his work . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, ISBN 978-3-658-22375-5 .

Web links

Commons : Charles Wright Mills  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Single receipts

  1. ^ Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought By Daniel Geary, p. 1.
  2. ^ C. Wright Mills: Letter to the New Left . In: New Left Review (Ed.): New Left Review . I, No. 5, September – October 1960. Full text.
  3. ^ Irving Louis Horowitz : An Introduction to C. Wright Mills. In: Power, Politics and People. The Collected Essays of C. Wright Mills. Oxford University Press London Oxford New York, pp. 2f
  4. ↑ Guy Oakes, Arthur J. Vidich: Guy Oakes, Arthur J. Vidich (Eds.): Collaboration, reputation, and ethics in American academic life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills . University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1999, ISBN 978-0-252-06807-2 , p. 6.
  5. ↑ a b c C. Wright Mills: Kathryn Mills, Pamela Mills (Eds.): C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings . University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California 2000, ISBN 978-0-520-21106-3 .
  6. ^ Charles Wright Mills, Helen Schneider: The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders . University of Illinois Press, 1948, ISBN 978-0-252-06948-2 ( google.de [accessed December 4, 2016]).
  7. ^ Charles Wright Mills, Helen Schneider: The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders . University of Illinois Press, 1948, ISBN 978-0-252-06948-2 ( google.de [accessed December 4, 2016]).
  8. ^ Andreas Hess: The political sociology C. Wright Mills': A contribution to the political history of ideas . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-663-01310-5 ( google.de [accessed December 4, 2016]).
  9. ↑ http://lh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/lh/article/viewFile/5507/4702
  10. ^ Andreas Hess: The political sociology C. Wright Mills': A contribution to the political history of ideas . Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-663-01310-5 ( google.de [accessed December 4, 2016]).
  11. ^ White Collar, C. Wright Mills. (No longer available online.) In: www.uni-muenster.de. Archived from the original on August 17, 2016 ; Retrieved December 4, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-muenster.de
  12. ↑ Lutz Eichler: System and Self: Work and Subjectivity in the Age of Their Strategic Recognition . transcript Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-8394-2213-7 ( google.de [accessed December 4, 2016]).
  13. ↑ Doug Mann: Understanding society: a survey of modern social theory . Oxford University Press, Don Mills, Ont. New York 2008, ISBN 978-0-19-542184-2 .
  14. ↑ Stuart Sim, Noel Parker (Ed.): The AZ guide to modern social and political theorists . Prentice Hall, Harvester Wheatsheaf, London 1997, ISBN 978-0-13-524885-0 .
  15. ↑ Joseph A. Scimecca: The sociological theory of C. Wright Mills . Kennikat Press Corp., Port Washington, New York 1977, ISBN 978-0-8046-9155-0 .
  16. ^ Archivlink ( Memento from September 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) 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
  17. ^ C. Wright Mills: The sociological imagination, fortieth anniversary edition . Oxford University Press, Oxford England New York 2000, ISBN 978-0-19-513373-8 .
  18. ^ The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills. (No longer available online.) In: www.uni-muenster.de. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016 ; Retrieved December 5, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uni-muenster.de
  19. ^ C. Wright Mills: From the sociological imagination . In: Gareth Massey (ed.): Readings for sociology , 7th edition, WW Norton & Company, New York, ISBN 978-0-393-91270-8 , pp. 13-18.
  20. ↑ Wolfgang J. Helbich: A sociologist criticizes sociology . In: Die Zeit , September 4, 1964. Retrieved December 16, 2016. 
personal data
SURNAME Mills, Charles Wright
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 28, 1916
PLACE OF BIRTH Waco , Texas
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1962
Place of death Nyack , New York