# C. Wright Mills  - The Sociological Imagination - Troubles vs. Issues

**Channel:** Revolution and Ideology
**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5lcrT_d-CQ
**Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/Y5lcrT_d-CQ

## Chapters

- 0:00 — Mills and the Sociological Imagination
- 1:46 — Troubles Versus Social Issues
- 4:14 — Modern Examples of Social Issues
- 6:29 — Police Brutality and Final Takeaways

## Transcript

**[0:00]:** For a great short overview of C. Wright Mills, you know, his biography, his relevance and importance to sociology and so on. I always refer my students to an episode of the Social Science Bites podcast where sociologist John Brewer does a really good job of sort of covering those things very succinctly. So I'm not going to touch on that here. What I want to focus on here are Mills concept of biography and history and social issues and. And personal troubles in the sociological imagination.

**[0:30]:** Mills says the sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. This is really important when we're adopting a sociological lens through which to analyze and study a society. You might hear people say things like, you know, I've never experienced racism, or I've never experienced privilege, and therefore it doesn't exist. But what statements like these do is reduce these problems purely to individual biographies. And they absolutely, completely just deny a rich history of these things in our society.

**[1:07]:** So the first thing that's really important for Mills for sociologists to do, and those that are adopting the sociological perspective, is to really understand that we must consider an individual's biography and the history of the society in which they exist when we are confronting really social problems. He says, no social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and their intersections within a society has completed its intellectual journey. So we must always ensure in our analysis that we are considering an individual's biography, their own personal history and the history of society in which they exist.

**[1:46]:** The next two concepts from Mills here in the sociological imagination that I think are really important, the difference between troubles and issues. And he gives us really good explanations and some really good examples. He says troubles occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others. They have to do with his self and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware. Accordingly, the statement and the resolution of troubles properly lie within the individual and as a biographical entity and within the scope of his immediate milieu, the social setting that is directly open to his personal experience and to some extent, his willful activity. A trouble is a private matter. Values cherished by an individual are felt by him to be threatened.

**[2:33]:** So for Mills, a trouble is a personal problem, an individual problem. And we can expect to find the solution to that problem within the individual and their immediate surroundings. Mills has this to say about Issues have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life. They have to do with the organization of many such milieu into the institutions of an historical society as a whole, with the ways in which various milieu overlap and interpenetrate to form the larger structure of social and historical life. An issue is a public matter.

**[3:12]:** So for Mills, issues, think of them as social issues are much broader than just one single individual. And we can expect to find the solution to social issues within an individual, any one individual, and their immediate environment. Lynn Mills provides a really good example. He talks about unemployment in these terms. Consider unemployment.

**[3:32]:** When in a city of 100,000, only one man is unemployed, that is his personal trouble. And for its relief, we properly look to the character of the man, his skill, his immediate opportunities. But when in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million men are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its solution. Within the range of opportunities open to any one individual, the very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals.

**[4:14]:** So let's take that example and put it into more modern numbers. So, according to the Bureau of Labor statistics, there are 164 million people in the labor force in the United States. 5.72 million people are unemployed. That equates to 3.4%. So to use Mills terms here, when in a nation of 164 million, 5.72 million people are unemployed, we would consider that to be an issue.

**[4:41]:** We wouldn't possibly expect to find the solution to that issue within one single individual or the direct immediate environment of one single individual. We're talking about almost 6 million people here. Clearly, we must look to the structure and the history of a society, Economic structure, political structure, and so forth, in order for us to find the solution to this social issue, this 6 million people unemployed, as just one other more modern example, still related to unemployment, actually, we've all heard being talked about in the media, this idea of quiet quitting, this idea that somehow millennials are just lazy and they're quitting their jobs. And it's related somehow to the pandemic. But, you know, laziness and entitlement is just rampant in the millennial generation, and they're just quiet quitting their jobs. They're either directly quitting or. Or just staying at work and not working as hard as apparently the owners of industry expect them to.

**[5:40]:** I want us to understand when we put these into the context of Mill's terms, right this Idea of quiet quitting. We can start to see how the narrative that we see when we see this being talked about in the media and so forth, really frames it as a personal trouble. It really places the blame on the individuals that are doing this act.

**[5:58]:** Instead of framing it the more correct way, which would be to frame it as a social issue. Right. If tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people are taking part in this activity. Right. This is an issue within society.

**[6:12]:** And for its solution, we must look at the societal level. We must look at, you know, the economic milieu. We must look at the history of society and so forth. But this is not, despite how it's often framed, a personal trouble. This is a social issue, and we must consider it in our analysis as such.

**[6:29]:** One more example is police brutality. We've all heard people say things, even in the media, like why don't they just follow the officer's commands? And this wouldn't be happening. Why don't they just not break the law? And this wouldn't be happening. I want you now to think about how that framing is framing a social issue as a personal trouble. That framing really lends itself to the idea that the solution for this lies within an individual or. Or a group of individuals and their immediate surroundings rather than what has become a social issue. We must look at social structures and so on in order for us to find a solution to this issue. In conclusion, we can't expect to understand society nor an individual without understanding the history of society overall and that individual person's biography. And I want to stress there we're not just talking about social issues.

**[7:21]:** How do we analyze and critique and really develop perspective on social issues? Well, we must think about individuals and history. I want to stress that we also can't begin to understand any one individual without understanding who they are as a person, their individual past, and the social milieu, to use Mills terms in which they exist and the history of the society in which they have been born and brought up and raised and continue to function, and the ways that that society has impacted their decisions and their behavior and their opportunities and. And so forth. And in all of our analysis, we must take care to really frame things appropriately as social issues or personal troubles and understand the differences between those two things and where and when and how they intersect.