C Wright Mills, an American sociologist in 1959, introduced the concept of sociological imagination. This concept is defined as the understanding of the association between personal experiences and the society in general. This concept offers a framework for comprehension that our social environment exceeds any regular idea that we might draw from our social experiences, which is limited. The aim of this concept was to encourage people to change the way they perceive their lives. An example of sociological imagination is unemployment. A person experiencing unemployment may feel discouraged, useless, and beaten. However, Wright encourages individuals to cease from focusing on themselves only and look at the broader setting of society.
Wright distinguished sociological imagination between public issues and personal troubles. According to Wright, “personal troubles” involve problems that occur because of character of a person or willfully activity they engage in, that directly affects them hence a private matter. For example, if a person fails to find a summer job, that is a private trouble because it only affects one individual. On the other hand, “public issues’ involve challenges that surpass an individual’s local environment and their narrow range of life to the wider society. If people feel their values are threatened, then that is a public challenge. For example, if groups of people do not get jobs for a certain period of time, then that becomes a public issue because it impacts on the whole group, which in turn may affect the administration of public funding and potential policies.
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These examples are related in the sense that in some cases, the government often presents public issues as private issues by putting the blame on individuals for not finding work. The government claims it is not the crisis in the political or structural arrangements that result in unemployment. According to Wright, the government can resolve this problem by focusing on isolated cases and take challenges “as challenges of individuals.” Therefore, focusing on individual change rather than changing the structure of institutions remains a major concern.
