C. Wright Mills facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
C. Wright Mills
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Charles Wright Mills
August 28, 1916 Waco, Texas, U.S.
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| Died | March 20, 1962 (aged 45) West Nyack, New York, U.S.
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| Thesis | A Sociological Account of Pragmatism (1942) |
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| Notable students | Morris Rosenberg |
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Charles Wright Mills (born August 28, 1916 – died March 20, 1962) was an American sociologist. He taught sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until he passed away in 1962. Mills wrote many books and articles for both general readers and experts. He is best known for books like The Power Elite, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, and The Sociological Imagination.
Mills believed that thinkers and scholars had a special duty after World War II. He felt they should be actively involved in public life and politics, not just watch from the sidelines. His ideas had a big impact on the New Left social movements of the 1960s. In fact, Mills helped make the term New Left popular in the US with his 1960 letter, "Letter to the New Left."
Contents
About C. Wright Mills
Early Life and School
C. Wright Mills was born in Waco, Texas, on August 28, 1916. His father, Charles Grover Mills, sold insurance, and his mother, Frances, was a homemaker. His parents were religious and from the middle class. As a boy, Mills sang in the choir at a Catholic church. He later grew to dislike some religious practices.
Mills went to Dallas Technical High School. He was interested in engineering and studied subjects like algebra, physics, and mechanical drawing. His parents hoped he would have a practical career in the growing industrial world of Texas.
College Years
In 1934, Mills finished high school. His father wanted him to go to Texas A&M University, but Mills found it "suffocating" and left after his first year. He then transferred to the University of Texas at Austin. There, he studied anthropology, social psychology, sociology, and philosophy.
The University of Texas had strong programs in social and physical sciences. Mills did very well and impressed his professors with his sharp mind. In 1939, he earned a bachelor's degree in sociology and a master's degree in philosophy. Even before graduating, he had already published articles in two major sociology journals.
While at Texas, Mills met Dorothy Helen Smith, who became his first wife. She was also studying sociology. After they married in 1937, Dorothy, also called "Freya," worked to support them while Mills finished his studies. She also helped type and edit his work.
At Texas, Mills also met Hans Gerth, a sociology professor from Germany. Gerth became a close friend and mentor to Mills. Together, they translated and edited some of Max Weber's important writings. They also worked on a book called Character and Social Structure, which looked at how people are shaped by society.
Mills earned his PhD in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1942. His main paper was about how people's ideas and society are connected.
Starting His Career
Mills became a Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1942. He was able to avoid being drafted into the military because of his high blood pressure. From 1941 to 1945, his interest in American politics grew. During World War II, Mills became friends with historians like Richard Hofstadter. They wrote about how the war affected American society.
While at the University of Maryland, Mills started writing for intellectual magazines. He wrote opinion pieces and articles that looked at society in a journalistic way. These appeared in journals like The New Republic and The New Leader.
In 1945, Mills moved to New York City. He got a research job at Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research. He and Freya divorced in 1947.
In 1946, Mills became an assistant professor in Columbia's sociology department. He received a grant to help him research his book White Collar, which came out in 1951. Also in 1946, he published From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology with Hans Gerth. They published another book together, Character and Social Structure, in 1953.
In 1947, Mills married his second wife, Ruth Harper, who was a statistician. She worked with him on several books, including New Men of Power (1948), White Collar (1951), and The Power Elite (1956). Mills became an Associate Professor at Columbia in 1950 and a full Professor in 1956.
From 1956 to 1957, Mills and his family lived in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. Mills and Ruth divorced in 1959.
Later Years and Important Work
In 1959, Mills married his third wife, Yaroslava Surmach, an artist. They settled in Rockland County, New York. Their son, Nikolas Charles, was born in 1960.
In August 1960, Mills visited Cuba to work on his book Listen, Yankee. He spent 16 days there, talking to Cuban government officials and regular people. He even interviewed President Fidel Castro, who said he had read Mills's book The Power Elite. Mills and Castro got along well, and Castro sent flowers when Mills passed away a few years later.
Mills was known for working very quickly and efficiently. He was also known for challenging ideas and people. During a visit to the Soviet Union, he was seen as an important critic of American society. While there, he spoke out against censorship. He famously toasted an early Soviet leader who was killed, saying, "To the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published in the Soviet Union!" This was a brave statement because Trotsky's works were banned in the Soviet Union.
His Passing
C. Wright Mills had a heart condition. He worked fast, perhaps knowing he might not live a long life. In 1962, Mills had his fourth and final heart attack. He died on March 20 in West Nyack, New York, at the age of 45. Services were held at Columbia University and for his friends and family.
How Mills Connected with Other Thinkers
People Who Influenced Mills
Before becoming a sociologist, Mills studied philosophy deeply. His ideas about a fair and equal democracy were shaped by thinkers like Thorstein Veblen, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead. At the University of Wisconsin, Hans Gerth, a German sociology professor, greatly influenced Mills. Gerth helped Mills understand European ideas and sociological theories.
Mills and Gerth worked together for 13 years, starting in 1940. Mills would edit and organize Gerth's drafts, while Gerth translated German materials. Their first joint work was "A Marx for the Managers," which criticized a book by James Burnham. They had disagreements, but their partnership created important new work for sociology.
Mills was also strongly influenced by a way of thinking called pragmatism. This included the ideas of George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce, and William James. While he was influenced by Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen, the way Mills looked at social structures was also shaped by Max Weber and Karl Mannheim. Mills believed that understanding Marxism was important for all sociologists. He also found ideas from Neo-Freudianism helpful in his work.
People Mills Influenced
C. Wright Mills influenced many important thinkers and scholars. Here are a few:
- Stanley Cohen: A sociologist known for his work on how people manage their emotions.
- G. William Domhoff: A professor of psychology and sociology who studies power in society.
- Tom Hayden: An American social and political activist and writer.
- Rosabeth Moss Kanter: A business professor whose book Men and Women of the Corporation won an award named after C. Wright Mills.
- Arnold Kaufmann: A French engineer and professor.
- Ralph Miliband: A British sociologist known for his Marxist ideas.
- Teodor Shanin: A British sociologist who taught at the University of Manchester.
- William Appleman Williams: A leading historian of American diplomacy.
- Jock Young: A British sociologist and important criminologist.
Mills's Viewpoints
People have often debated whether Mills was a "secret Marxist" or more like Max Weber. Mills focused on social classes and their role in history, which is similar to Marxist ideas. However, he also used Weber's ideas about how society is organized. Mills believed that political, economic, and military groups had the most power, not culture.
Mills never called himself a "Marxist" publicly. But he told close friends that he felt closer to a flexible, human-focused Marxism than other ideas. He saw himself as a "plain Marxist" working in the spirit of the early Marx.
Mills believed that sociology should help us connect our personal lives to bigger historical events. He called this the sociological imagination. It helps us understand how our own experiences are shaped by the larger society and history. The main idea is to link personal problems with public issues. For example, if one person can't find a job, it's a personal problem. But if many people in a city can't find jobs, it's a public issue caused by bigger societal problems.
Mills shared with other "conflict theorists" the idea that American society is divided. He believed it was shaped by the relationship between powerful and powerless groups. He also cared about how social structures affect people's feelings and how powerful groups use media to control people.
Mills saw sociology as a political activity that should help democracy. In The Sociological Imagination, he wrote:
It is the political task of the social scientist – as of any liberal educator – continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work – and, as an educator, in his life as well – this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society.
This means that social scientists should help people see how their personal problems are often connected to bigger problems in society. By doing this, they help people think more clearly and become more individual. This helps create a stronger democracy.
Mills's Criticisms of Sociology
Even though he was a sociologist, Mills was quite critical of how sociology was being studied at the time. His book The Sociological Imagination is seen as his final break with traditional academic sociology. In this book, he criticized specific people and ideas within his field.
Mills was worried that sociology was becoming too focused on just describing things as they are, instead of questioning and criticizing social life. He believed that social sciences should not be too influenced by powerful cultural norms. Instead, they should stick to their original goal of understanding and challenging society. Mills fought throughout his career to keep sociology true to what he believed was its purpose.
Mills's Books
Mills wrote many important books that shaped how people think about society.
- From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946): Mills edited and translated this book with Hans Gerth. It contains important writings by the German sociologist Max Weber. They worked hard to make sure the translations were very accurate.
- The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (1948): This book looked at labor leaders in America. Mills concluded that labor unions had stopped fighting against the capitalist system and had become part of it.
- The Puerto Rican Journey (1950): Written with Clarence Senior and Rose Kohn Goldsen, this book studied the experiences of Puerto Ricans in New York. It was a detailed study of their lives.
- White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951): This book explored the lives of middle-class workers in the United States. Mills argued that large organizations made middle-class workers lose their independent thinking. He felt they became like robots, controlled but happy. Mills worried that the middle class was losing its power and influence. This would allow a strong social elite to take over. He believed that middle-class workers earned enough money but felt disconnected from the world because they couldn't change it.
- Character and Social Structure (1953): Mills wrote this book with Hans Gerth. It was considered his most complex theoretical work. It combined ideas about individual behavior with how social structures work. It focused on the different roles people play and how these roles connect to social groups.
- The Power Elite (1956): This famous book describes the close connections between leaders in politics, the military, and the economy. Mills argued that these powerful groups share similar views and that power is concentrated among them. He believed they worked together to keep a "permanent war economy" going. This helped them control the ups and downs of American capitalism. They also used the media to hide their control over society. President Dwight D. Eisenhower even mentioned Mills's ideas from this book in his farewell speech in 1961. He warned about the dangers of a "military-industrial complex," which was a direct reference to Mills's work.
- The Causes of World War Three (1958) and Listen, Yankee (1960): In these books, Mills tried to give a moral voice to society. He wanted to make the powerful elite responsible to the public. Listen, Yankee was controversial because it explored the Cuban Revolution from the point of view of a Cuban revolutionary. This was a very new way of writing for that time in American history.
- The Sociological Imagination (1959): This is considered Mills's most important book. It describes a way of thinking for studying sociology called the sociological imagination. This way of thinking helps us connect our personal experiences to larger societal relationships. It has three main parts: history, personal life, and social structure. Mills said that a key job for social scientists is to "translate personal troubles into public issues." This means understanding how a single person's problem might be part of a bigger problem affecting many people in society. For example, if one person is unemployed, it's a trouble. But if many people in a city are unemployed, it's a public issue. This book helped a new generation of social scientists focus on social change.
- Images of Man: The Classic Tradition in Sociological Thinking (1960): Mills edited this book and added his own introduction. He explained that he believed classical sociologists used models to understand society. He felt these models were why their ideas remained important.
- The Marxists (1962): In this book, Mills used his ideas about sociological models to criticize both modern liberalism and Marxism. He thought that the liberal model didn't work well to understand all of society. However, he believed that Marxism, even if not perfect, offered a working model for how society is structured and how history unfolds.
Mills's Lasting Impact
C. Wright Mills's ideas continue to influence scholars today. His thinking about how personal lives and history connect is still very important. The "International Sociological Association" even named The Sociological Imagination as the second most important book of the century.
Many of Mills's friends remembered him as a brilliant but challenging person. His co-author, Hans Gerth, called him his "alter ego," even with their disagreements. Mills's work remained very popular after his death. In a 2005 survey of best-selling sociology textbooks, Mills was mentioned far more than any other author.
Frank W. Elwell, a scholar, explains that Mills's legacy is that he "writes about issues and problems that matter to people, not just to other sociologists." His work is useful not only for sociology students but for everyone. Mills wrote about important topics like the rise of white-collar jobs, the power of large organizations, the Cold War, and the spread of communism.
In 1964, the Society for the Study of Social Problems created the C. Wright Mills Award. This award is given to a book that shows excellent social science research and helps us understand the connection between individuals and society, following C. Wright Mills's ideas.
