C

C.
Wright Mills
Born Charles Wright Mills
August 28, 1916
Waco, Texas
Died March 20, 1962 (aged 45)
West Nyack, New York
[1]
Alma mater Texas A&M University; University of
Texas at Austin; University of
WisconsinMadison
Occupation Political sociologist
Known for The Sociological Imagination
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916 March 20, 1962)
was an American sociologist, and a professor of sociology at
Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills
was published widely in popular and intellectual journals,
and is remembered for several books, among them The
Power Elite, which introduced that term and describes the
relationships and class alliances among the U.S. political,
military, and economic elites; White Collar, on the American
middle class; and The Sociological Imagination, where Mills
proposes the proper relationship in sociological scholarship
between biography and history.
Mills was concerned with the responsibilities of intellectuals
in post-World War II society, and advocated public and
political engagement over uninterested observation. Mills
biographer Daniel Geary writes that his writings had a
"particularly significant impact on New Left social movements of the 1960s."
[2]
In fact, Mills popularized the
term "New Left" in the U.S. in a 1960 open letter, Letter to the New Left.
[3]
1 Biography
2 Influences
3 Books
4 Legacy
5 Outlook
6 The C. Wright Mills Award
6.1 Recipients of the C. Wright Mills Award
7 See also
8 Footnotes
9 Further reading
9.1 Primary sources
10 External links
C. Wright Mills was born in Waco, Texas on August 28, 1916 and lived in Texas until he was twenty-three years
old.
[1]
His father, Charles Grover Mills, worked as an insurance salesman while his mother,Frances Wright
C. Wright Mills - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Wright_Mills
1 of 14 5/14/2014 12:49 AM
Mills, stayed at home as a housewife.
[1][4]
His family moved constantly when he was growing up and as a
result, he lived a relatively isolated life with few continuous relationships.
[5]
Mills graduated from Dallas
Technical High School in 1934.
[6]
He initially attended Texas A&M University but left after his first year and
subsequently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1939 with a bachelor's degree in sociology
and a master's degree in philosophy. By the time he graduated, Mills had already been published in the two
leading sociology journals in the U.S., the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of
Sociology.
[7]
While studying at Texas, Mills met his first wife, Dorothy Helen Smith, who was also a student there. After
their marriage in 1937 Dorothy Helen, or "Freya," worked to support the couple while Mills completed his
graduate work, and typed and copy edited much of his work, including his Ph.D. dissertation. They were
married in October 1937. In August 1939, the couple moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he entered the
doctoral program in sociology and met Hans Gerth, a professor there. Mills did not take any classes with Gerth.
Freya divorced Mills in August 1940, but the couple remarried in March 1941, and their daughter, Pamela, is
born on J anuary 15, 1943.
[1]
Mills received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of WisconsinMadison in 1942. His dissertation was
entitled "A Sociological Account of Pragmatism: An Essay on the Sociology of Knowledge."
[8]
Mills refused to
revise his dissertation while it was reviewed, and it was later accepted without approval from the review
committee.
[9]
Mills left Wisconsin in early 1942 upon being appointed Professor of Sociology at the University
of Maryland, College Park.
In 1945, Mills moved to New York after securing a research associate position at Columbia University's Bureau
of Applied Social Research. Mills separated from Freya with the move, and the couple was divorced in 1947.
Mills was appointed Assistant Professor in the University's sociology department in 1946.
[10]
In the mid-1940s while still at Maryland, Mills began contributing 'journalistic sociology' and opinion pieces to
intellectual journals such as The New Republic, The New Leader, and Politics, the journal established by his
friend Dwight Macdonald in 1944.
[11][12]
1946 saw publication of From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, a translation of essays by Weber co-authored
with one of Mills' mentors and friends at Wisconsin, Hans Gerth.
[13]
In 1953, the two published a second work,
Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions.
[14]
In 1947, Mills married his second wife, Ruth Harper, a Bureau of Applied Social Research statistician who
worked with Mills on New Men of Power (1948), White Collar (1951), and The Power Elite (1956). In 1949,
Mills and Ruth went to Chicago so that Mills could serve as a visiting professor at the University of Chicago;
Mills returned to teaching at Columbia after a semester at the University of Chicago and was promoted to
Associate Professor of Sociology on J uly 1, 1950. Their daughter, Katherine, was born on J uly 14, 1955. Mills
was promoted to Professor of Sociology at Columbia on J uly 1, 1956. From 1956-57, the family moved to
Copenhagen, where Mills acted as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Copenhagen. Mills and Harper
separated in December 1957 when Mills returned from Copenhagen alone, and divorced in 1959.
[1]
Mills married his third wife, Yaroslava Surmach, an American artist of Ukrainian descent, and settled in
Rockland County, New York in 1959. Their son, Nikolas Charles, was born on J une 19, 1960.
[1]
Mills was described as a man in a hurry, and aside from his hurried nature, he was largely known for his
combativeness. Both his private life, with three marriages, a child from each, and several affairs, and his
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professional life, which involved challenging and criticizing many of his professors and coworkers, are
characterized as "tumultuous". He wrote a fairly obvious, though slightly veiled, essay in criticism of the former
chairman of the Wisconsin department, and called the senior theorist there, Howard Becker, a "real fool". On
one special occasion when Mills was honored during a visit to the Soviet Union as a major critic of American
society, he criticized censorship in the Soviet Union through his toast to an early Soviet leader was, "purged and
murdered by the Stalinists," saying, "To the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published in the
Soviet Union!"
[4]
Mills suffered from a series of heart attacks throughout his life and his fourth
[4]
and final attack lead to his death
on March 20, 1962.
[15]
C. Wright Mills was heavily influenced by pragmatism, specifically the work of George Mead and J ohn Dewey.
The social structure aspects of Mills' works is largely shaped by Max Weber and the writing of Karl Mannheim,
who followed Weber's work closely. Mills also acknowledged a general influence of Marxism; he noted that
Marxism had become an essential tool for sociologists and therefore all must naturally be educated on the
subject; any Marxist influence was then a result of sufficient education. Neo-Freudianism also helped shape
Mills' work.
[16]
From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946) was edited and translated in collaboration with Hans Gerth.
[1]
The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders (1948) studies the "Labor Metaphysic" and the dynamic of
labor leaders cooperating with business officials. The book concludes that labour had effectively renounced its
traditional oppositional role and become reconciled to life within a capitalist system. Appeased by "bread and
butter" economic policies, unions had adopted, Mills argued, a pliantly subordinate role in the new structure of
American power.
The Puerto Rican Journey (1950) was written in collaboration with Clarence Senior and Rose Kohn Goldsen. It
documents a methodological study and does not address theoretical sociological framework.
[1][16]
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951) offers a rich historical account of the middle class(es) in the
United States and contends that bureaucracies have overwhelmed middle-class workers, robbing them of all
independent thought and turning them into near-automatons, oppressed but cheerful. Mills states there are three
types of power within the workplace: coercion or physical force; authority; and manipulation.
[17]
Through this
piece, the thoughts of Mills and Weber seem to coincide in their belief that Western Society is trapped within
the iron cage of bureaucratic rationality, which would lead society to focus more on rationality and less on
reason.
[17]
Mills' fear was that the middle-class was becoming "politically emasculated and culturally stultified"
which would allow a shift in power from the middle-class to the strong social elite.
[18]
Middle-class workers
receive an adequate salary but have become alienated from the world because of their inability to affect or
change it.
Character and Social Structure (1953) was co-authored with Hans Gerth. This was considered his most
theoretically sophisticated work. Mills later came into conflict with Gerth, though Gerth positively referred to
him as, "an excellent operator, a whippersnapper, promising young man on the make, and Texas cowboy la
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ride and shoot."
[4]
Generally speaking, Character and Social Structure combines the social behaviorism and
personality structure of pragmatism with the social structure of Weberian sociology. It is centralized around
roles; how they are interpersonal and how they are related to institutions.
[16]
The Power Elite (1956) describes the relationships among the political, military, and economic elites, noting
that they share a common world view; that power rests in the centralization of authority within the elites of
society.
[17]
This centralization of authority is made up of the following components: a "military metaphysic," in
other words a military definition of reality; "class identity," recognizing themselves as separate from and
superior to the rest of society; "interchangeability," i.e., they move within and between the three institutional
structures and hold interlocking positions of power therein; cooperation/socialization, in other words,
socialization of prospective new members is done based on how well they "clone" themselves socially after
already established elites. Mills' view on the power elite is that they represent their own interest, which include
maintaining a "permanent war economy" to control the ebbs and flow of American Capitalism and the masking
of "a manipulative social and political order through the mass media."
[18]
The Causes of World War Three (1958) and Listen, Yankee (1960) are considered Mills' weakest work. In both,
he attempts to create a moral voice for society and make the power elite responsible to the "public".
[1][16]
The Sociological Imagination (1959), which is considered Mills' most influential book,
[19]
describes a mindset
for studying sociology the sociological imagination that stresses being able to connect individual
experiences and societal relationships. The three components that form the sociological imagination are:
History: why society is what it is and how it has been changing for a long time and how history is being
made in it
1.
Biography: the nature of "human nature" in a society; what kinds of people inhabit a particular society 2.
Social Structure: how the various institutional orders in a society function, which ones are dominant, how
they are kept together, how they might be changing too, etc.
3.
Mills asserts that a critical task for social scientists is to "translate private troubles into public issues," which is
something that it is very difficult for ordinary citizens to do.
[20]
The distinction between troubles and issues is
that troubles relate to a single person while issues refers to a group of people. For instance, man who cannot
find employment is experiencing a trouble while a city with a massive unemployment rate is experiencing an
issue.
[21]
Sociologists, then, rightly connect their autobiographical, personal challenges to social institutions.
Social scientists should then connect those institutions to social structure(s) and locate them within a historical
narrative.
The version of Images of Man: The Classic Tradition in Sociological Thinking (1960) worked on by C. Wright
Mills is simply an edited copy with the addition of an introduction written himself.
[1]
Through this work, Mills
explains that he believes the use of models is the characteristic of classical sociologists, and that these models
are the reason classical sociologists maintain relevance.
[16]
The Marxists (1962) takes Mills' explanation of sociological models from Images of Man and uses it to criticize
liberalism and Marxism. He believes that the liberalist model does not work and cannot create an overarching
view of society, but rather that it is more of an ideology for the entrepreneurial middle class. Marxism, however,
may be incorrect in its overall view, but does have a working model for societal structure, the mechanics of the
history of society, and the roles of individuals. One of Mills' problems with the Marxist model is that it uses
units that are small and autonomous, which he finds too simple to explain capitalism. Mills then provides
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discussion on Marx as a determinist.
[16]
Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes dedicated his novel The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) to Mills, "true voice of
North America, friend and companion in the struggle of Latin America."
There has long been debate over Mills' intellectual outlook. Mills is often seen as a "closet Marxist" because of
his emphasis on social classes and their roles in historical progress and attempt to keep Marxist traditions alive
in social theory. J ust as often however, others argue that Mills more closely identified with the work of Max
Weber, whom many sociologists interpret as an exemplar of sophisticated (and intellectually adequate)
anti-Marxism and modern liberalism. However, Mills clearly gives precedence to social structure described by
the political, economic and military institutions and not culture, which is presented in its massified form as
means to ends sought by the power elite, which puts him firmly in the Marxist and not Weberian camp, so much
that in his collection of classical essays, Weber's Protestant Ethic is not included. Weber's idea of bureaucracy as
internalized social control was embraced by Mills as was the historicity of his method, yet far from liberalism
(being its critic), Mills was a radical who was culturally forced to distance himself from Marx while being
"near" him.
While Mills never embraced the "Marxist" label, he told his closest associates that he felt much closer to what
he saw as the best currents of flexible, humanist Marxism than to its alternatives. He considered himself as a
"plain Marxist" working in the spirit of young Marx as he claims in his collected essays: "Power, Politics and
People" (Oxford University Press, 1963). In a November 1956 letter to his friends Bette and Harvey Swados,
Mills declared "[i]n the meantime, let's not forget that there's more [that's] still useful in even the Sweezy
[22]
kind of Marxism than in all the routineers of J . S. Mill
[23]
put together."
There is an important quotation from Letters to Tovarich (autobiographical essay) dated Fall 1957 titled "On
Who I Might Be and How I Got That Way":
You've asked me, 'What might you be?' Now I answer you: 'I am a Wobbly.' I mean this
spiritually and politically. In saying this I refer less to political orientation than to political ethos,
and I take Wobbly to mean one thing: the opposite of bureaucrat. [] I am a Wobbly,
personally, down deep, and for good. I am outside the whale, and I got that way through social
isolation and self-help. But do you know what a Wobbly is? It's a kind of spiritual condition.
Don't be afraid of the word, Tovarich. A Wobbly is not only a man who takes orders from
himself. He's also a man who's often in the situation where there are no regulations to fall back
upon that he hasn't made up himself. He doesn't like bosses capitalistic or communistic they
are all the same to him. He wants to be, and he wants everyone else to be, his own boss at all
times under all conditions and for any purposes they may want to follow up. This kind of
spiritual condition, and only this, is Wobbly freedom.
[24]
These two quotations are the ones chosen by Kathryn Mills for the better acknowledgement of the nuanced
thinking of C.W.Mills.
It appears that Mills understood his position as being much closer to Marx than to Weber, albeit influenced by
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both, as Stanley Aronowitz argued in A Mills Revival?.
[25]
Mills argues that micro and macro levels of analysis
can be linked together by the sociological imagination, which enables its possessor to understand the large
historical sense in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.
Individuals can only understand their own experiences fully if they locate themselves within their period of
history. The key factor is the combination of private problems with public issues: the combination of troubles
that occur within the individuals immediate milieu and relations with other people with matters that have to do
with institutions of an historical society as a whole. Mills shares with Marxist sociology and other "conflict
theorists" the view that American society is sharply divided and systematically shaped by the relationship
between the powerful and powerless. He also shares their concerns for alienation, the effects of social structure
on the personality, and the manipulation of people by elites and the mass media. Mills combined such
conventional Marxian concerns with careful attention to the dynamics of personal meaning and small-group
motivations, topics for which Weberian scholars are more noted.
Mills had a very combative outlook regarding and towards many parts of his life, the people in it, and his works.
In this way, he was a self-proclaimed outsider.
I am an outlander, not only regionally, but deep down and for good.
[26]
C. Wright Mills gave considerable study to the Soviet Union. Invited to the U.S.S.R., where he was
acknowledged for his criticism of American society, Mills used the opportunity to attack Soviet censorship. He
did hold the controversial notion that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were ruled by similar bureaucratic power elites
and thus were convergent rather than divergent societies.
Above all, Mills understood sociology, when properly approached, as an inherently political endeavor and a
servant of the democratic process. In The Sociological Imagination, Mills 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.
[20]
Contemporary American scholar Cornel West argued in his text American Evasion of Philosophy that C. Wright
Mills follows the tradition of pragmatism. Mills shared Dewey's goal of a "creative democracy" and emphasis
on the importance of political practice but criticized Dewey for his inattention to the rigidity of power structure
in the U.S. Mills' dissertation was titled Sociology and Pragmatism: The Higher Learning in America, and West
categorized him along with pragmatists in his time Sidney Hook and Reinhold Niebuhr as thinkers during
pragmatism's "mid-century crisis".
The Society for the Study of Social Problems established the C. Wright Mills Award in 1964 for the book that
"best exemplifies outstanding social science research and a great understanding the individual and society in the
tradition of the distinguished sociologist, C. Wright Mills."
[27]
The criteria are for the book that most
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effectively:
[28]
critically address an issue of contemporary public importance, 1.
bring to the topic a fresh, imaginative perspective, 2.
advance social scientific understanding of the topic, 3.
display a theoretically informed view and empirical orientation, 4.
evince quality in style of writing, 5.
explicitly or implicitly contains implications for courses of action. 6.
Recipients of the C. Wright Mills Award
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Year Name Book Title
2012 Cybelle Fox
Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American
Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal
2011 Shamus Rahman Khan Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Pauls School
2010 Mark Hunter
Love in the Time of AIDS: Inequality, Gender, and Rights in South
Africa
2009 Mario Luis Small Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life
2008 Martn Snchez-J ankowski
Cracks in the Pavement: Social Change and Resilience in Poor
Neighborhoods
2007 Daniel J affee Brewing J ustice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival
2006 Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
2005 Pun Ngai Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace
2004 Mario Luis Small
Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston
Barrio
2003 Sharon Hays Flat Broke With Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform
2002 Co-Winner, Gordon Lafer The J ob Training Charade
2002
Co-Winner, David Naguib
Pellow
Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental J ustice in Chicago
2001 Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo
Domstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows
of Affluence
2000 Michle Lamont
The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race,
Class, and Immigration
1999 Mitchell Duneier Sidewalk
1998 Monica J . Casper
The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal
Surgery
1997 J ohn Hagan and Bill McCarthy Mean Streets: Youth Crime and Homelessness
1996 Steven Epstein Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge
1995 Co-Winner, Philippe Bourgois In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio
1995
Co-Winner, Melvin L. Oliver
and Thomas M. Shapiro
Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality
1994 Robert Thomas
What Machines Cant Do: Politics and Technology in the Industrial
Enterprise
1993 David Wagner
Checkerboard Square: Culture and Resistance in a Homeless
Community
1992 Roger N. Lancaster
Life is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in
Nicaragua
1991 Sharon Zukin Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World
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1990 Patricia Hill Collins
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics
of Empowerment
1989 Co-Winner, Douglas McAdam Freedom Summer
1989 Co-Winner, Alan Wolfe Whose Keeper? Social Science and Moral Obligation
1988 Co-Winner, Ivan Szelenyi Socialist Entrepreneurs: Embourgeoisement in Rural Hungary
1988 Co-Winner, J ohn Sutton
Stubborn Children: Controlling Delinquency in the United States,
1640-1981
1987 William J . Wilson
The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, and Public
Policy
1986 Co-Winner, Diana E. H. Russell The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women
1986 Co-Winner, Charles Tilly The Contentious French: Four Centuries of Popular Struggle
1986
Co-Winner, J oyce Rothschild
and J . Allen Whitt
The Cooperative Workplace: Potentials and Dilemmas of
Organizational Democracy and Participation
1985 Viviana A. Zelizer Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children
1984 Co-Winner, Michael Useem
The Inner Circle: Large Corporations and the Rise of Business
Political Activity in the U.S. and U.K.
1984 Co-Winner, Richard Madsen Morality and Power in a Chinese Village
1983 Manuel Castells
The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban
Social Movements
1982 Paul Starr
The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a
Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry
1981 J udith Lewis Herman Father-Daughter Incest
1980 Michael Lipsky
Street Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public
Services
1979 Theda Skocpol
States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France,
Russia, and China
1978 Walter Korpi
The Working Class in Welfare Capitalism: Work, Unions and Politics
in Sweden
1977 Rosabeth Moss Kanter Men and Women of the Corporation
1976 J anice E. Perlman
The Myth of Marginality: Urban Poverty and Politics in Rio de
J aneiro
1975 Mary O. Furner
Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of
American Social Science
1974 Harry Braverman
Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the
Twentieth Century
1973 Co-Winner, J ames B. Rule
Private Lives and Public Surveillance: Social Control in the Computer
Age
1973 Co-Winner, Isaac D. Balbus
The Dialectics of Legal Repression: Black Rebels before the
American Courts
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1972 David M. Gordon
Theories of Poverty and Underemployment: Orthodox, Radical and
Dual Labor Market Perspectives
1971
Frances Fox Piven and Richard
A. Cloward
Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare
1970 J acqueline P. Wiseman Stations of the Lost: The Treatment of Skid Row Alcoholics
1969 Laud Humphreys Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places
1968 Gerald D. Suttles
The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner
City
1967 Co-Winner, Elliott Liebow Tallys Corner: A Study of Negro Street Corner Men
1967
Co-Winner, Travis Hirschi and
Hanan C. Selvin
Delinquency Research: An Appraisal of Analytical Methods
1966 J erome H. Skolnick J ustice Without Trial
1965 Robert Boguslaw The New Utopians
1964 David Matza Delinquency and Drift
[29]
Military-industrial complex
^
a

b

c

d

e

f

g

h

i

j
Mills, C. Wright (2000). C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings. Berkeley and Los
Angeles, California: University of California Press. ISBN 0520211065.
1.
^ Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought (http://books.google.com.qa
/books?id=Z4yNnGJ LHU8C&dq=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) By
Daniel Geary, p. 1.
2.
^ Letter to the New Left by C. Wright Mills 1960 (http://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills-c-wright/letter-
new-left.htm)
3.
^
a

b

c

d
Ritzer, George (2011). Sociological Theory. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. pp. 215217.
ISBN 9780078111679.
4.
^ Crossman, Ashley. "C. Wright Mills" (http://sociology.about.com/od/Profiles/p/C-Wright-Mills.htm). The New
York Times Company. Retrieved 4 October 2012.
5.
^ Short biography of C. Wright Mills published in the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers in 3 volumes by
Thoemmes Press, Bristol, UK, 2004
6.
^ C Wright Mills An American Utopia (http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=tcIr4x7s49AC&
dq=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) By Irving Louis Horowitz, p. 40
7.
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^ C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings (http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=1ik9ZUywjcQC&
dq=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) By C. Wright Mills, Kathryn Mills,
Pamela Mills, Dan Wakefield, 2001, p. 77
8.
^ Darity, J r., William A. (2008). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (http://go.galegroup.com
/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX3045301564&v=2.1&u=mlin_c_collhc&it=r&p=GVRL&
sw=w&asid=0060a4d38ecd10471f0d68d01181481f). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 181183.
9.
^ Daniel Geary (2009). Radical ambition: C. Wright Mills, the left and American social thought.
ISBN 0-520-25836-3. "In early 1946, he was appointed assistant professor at Columbia College"
10.
^ C Wright Mills An American Utopia (http://books.google.com.qa/books?id=tcIr4x7s49AC&
dq=c+wright+mills+%22university+of+maryland%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s) By Irving Louis Horowitz, pp.
6771
11.
^ TIME April 4, 1994 Volume 143, No. 14, "Biographical sketch of Dwight Macdonald" by J ohn Elson
(http://karws.gso.uri.edu/J FK/History/WC_Period/Reactions_to_Warren_Report/Reactions_of_left
/Bio_of_Macdonald.html) (Accessed 4 December 2008)
12.
13.
14.
^ edited; Sica, with introductions by Alan (2005). Social thought : from the Enlightenment to the present. Boston:
Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 0-205-39437-X.
15.
^
a

b

c

d

e

f
Scimecca, J oseph A. (1977). The Sociological Theory of C. Wright Mills. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat
Press Corp. ISBN 080469155X.
16.
^
a

b

c
Mann, Douglas (2007). Understanding society : a survey of modern social theory. Toronto: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 978-0-19-542184-2.
17.
^
a

b
The AZ guide to modern social and political theorists. London: Prentice Hall, Harvester Wheatsheaf. 1997.
ISBN 0-13-524885-X.
18.
^ [1] (http://www.isa-sociology.org/books/vt/bkv_000.htm) 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
19.
^
a

b
[Mills, C Wright. THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION Fortieth Anniversary Edition. Oxford University
Press, 2000.]
20.
^ Mills, C. Wright (March 17, 2014). Garth Massey, ed. Readings For Sociology (Seventh Edition ed.). New York:
W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 1318. ISBN 9780393912708.
21.
^ Paul M. Sweezy, founder of Monthly Review magazine, "an independent socialist magazine". 22.
^ I.e., liberal intellectuals. 23.
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^ From C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings, edited by Kathryn Mills with Pamela Mills,
introduction by Dan Wakefield (University of California Press, 2000.), pag.252. Wobblies are members of the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the direct action they are favouring includes passive resistance, strikes,
and boycotts. They want to build a new society according to general socialist principles but they are refusing to
endorse any socialist party or any other kind of political party.
24.
^ "These perspectives owed as much to the methodological precepts of Emile Durkheim as they did to the critical
theory of Karl Marx and Max Weber. Using many of the tools of conventional social inquiry: surveys, interviews,
data analysischarts includedMills takes pains to stay close to the data until the concluding chapters. But what
distinguishes Mills from mainstream sociology, and from Weber, with whom he shares a considerable portion of his
intellectual outlook, is the standpoint of radical social change, not of fashionable sociological neutrality." A Mills
Revival? (http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm).
25.
^ Horowitz, Irving L. C. Wright Mills: An American Utopian. New York: Free Press, 1983. 26.
^ "C. Wright Mills Award" (http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/253/). Society for the Study of Social Problems.
Retrieved 12 April 2012.
27.
^ "C. Wright Mills Award Committee" (http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/m/74/iv_the_committees_of_the_society/).
Society for the Study of Social Problems. Retrieved 12 April 2012.
28.
^ "C. Wright Mills Award Past Winners" (http://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageid/122/m/335). The Society for the
Study of Social Problems. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
29.
Herbert Aptheker, The World of C. Wright Mills. New York: Marzani and Munsell, 1960.
Stanley Aronowitz, "A Mills Revival?" (http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm) Logos Journal,
Summer 2003.
Stanley Aronowitz. Taking It Big: C. Wright Mills and the Making of Political Intellectuals. New York:
Columbia University Press, 2012.
G. William Domhoff, "Mills's The Power Elite 50 Years Later," (http://sociology.ucsc.edu
/whorulesamerica/theory/mills_review_2006.html) Contemporary Sociology, November 2006.
Douglas F. Dowd, "On Veblen, Mills... And the Decline of Criticism," Dissent, vol. 11, no. 1 (Winter
1964), pp. 2938.
J ohn Eldridge, C. Wright Mills (Key Sociologists). Ellis Horwood, 1983.
Daniel Geary, "Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought." Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press 2009.
Geary, Daniel (2008). "Becoming International Again: C. Wright Mills and the Emergence of a Global
New Left". Journal of American History 95 (3): 710736. doi:10.2307/27694377 (http://dx.doi.org
/10.2307%2F27694377).
Irving Louis Horowitz, C. Wright Mills, an American Utopian (1983).
Tom Hayden with Contemporary Reflections by Stanley Aronowitz, Richard Flacks, and Charles Lemert,
Radical Nomad: C. Wright Mills and His Times. East Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.
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Keith Kerr. Postmodern Cowboy: C. Wright Mills and a New 21st Century Sociology. East Boulder, CO:
Paradigm Publishers, 2008.
Kevin Mattson, Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-1970.
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002.
A.J . Muste and Irving Howe, "C. Wright Mills' Program: Two Views," Dissent, vol. 6, no. 2 (Spring
1959), pp. 189196.
Harvey Swados, "C. Wright Mills: A Personal Memoir," Dissent, vol. 10, no. 1 (Winter 1963), pp. 3542.
E.P. Thompson, "C. Wright Mills: The Responsible Craftsman," Radical America, vol. 13, no. 4
(J uly-Aug. 1979), pp. 6073.
Rick Tilman, C. Wright Mills: A Native Radical and his American Roots. University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1984.
A. J avier Trevino, The Social Thought of C. Wright Mills. Sage Publications, 2012.
Primary sources
Kathryn Mills (ed.) with Pamela Mills, C. Wright Mills: Letters and Autobiographical Writings.
Introduction by Dan Wakefield. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.
Official website (http://www.cwrightmills.org)
The Power Elite-Full Book online (http://www.watchmenfaithministries.com/images/The_Power_Elite_-
_New_Edition__first_full-scale_study_of_structure_and_distribution_of_power_in_USA___2000_.pdf)
Frank Elwell's page at Rogers State (http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Mills/)
An interview with Mills's daughters, Kathryn and Pamela (http://www.monthlyreview.org
/1007dawson.htm)
Mills-On Intellectual Craftsmanship (http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~psargent/Mills_Intell_Craft.pdf)
Contemporary C.Wright Mills (http://www.asadi.org)
C.W Mills, Structure of Power in American Society,British J ournal of Sociology,Vol.9.No.1 1958
(http://www.csub.edu/~akebede/SOC502Mills2.pdf)
A Mills Revival? (http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm)
C.Wright Mills, The Causes of World War Three (http://www.questia.com/library/book/the-causes-
of-world-war-three-by-c-wright-mills.jsp)
C.Wright Mills, Letter to the New Left (http://www.marxists.org/subject/humanism/mills-c-wright/letter-
new-left.htm)
Sociology-Congress in Kln 2000 workshop: C. Wright Mills and his Power Elite: Actuality today?
(http://www.uni-muenster.de/PeaCon/dgs-mills/Millspage-info.htm)
J ohn D Brewer, C.Wright Mills, the LSE and the sociological imagination [2] (http://www2.lse.ac.uk
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/CPNSS/events/Abstracts/C%20Wright%20Mills%20the%20LSE.pdf)
Daniel Geary (2009). Radical Ambition. C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought.
University of California Press. Chapter 6 [3] (http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/10339.ch06.pdf)
Daniel Geary in C.S.Soong's radio program Against the Grain (KPFA 94,1 MHz) on C.Wright Mills [4]
(http://www.againstthegrain.org/program/280/id/061509/wed-2-10-10-c-wright-mills-reconsidered)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=C._Wright_Mills&oldid=606793288"
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