Monday, September 15, 2008

Who is C. Wright Mills

Who is C. Wright Mills

Charles Mills (August 28, 1916, Waco, Texas – March 20, 1962, West Nyack, New York) was an American sociologist. Mills is best remembered for studying the structure of power in the U.S. in his book The Power Elite. Mills was concerned with the responsibilities of intellectuals in post-World War II society, and advocated relevance and engagement over disinterested academic observation, as a "public intelligence apparatus" in challenging the policies of the institutional elites in the "Three" (the economic, political and military).

In 1964 the Society for the Study of Social Problems began to give a yearly prize for the book that "best exemplifies outstanding social science research and an understanding of the individual and society in the tradition of the distinguished sociologist, C. Wright Mills." In a 1997 survey of members of the International Sociological Association which asked them to identify the ten books published in the 20th century which they considered to be the most influential for sociologists, they ranked The Sociological Imagination second, preceded only by Max Weber's Economy and Society.

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