Modern society is so complicated and personal experience is so scarce. How can we understand our own life, even our own times, and the relationship between our destiny and great history? In this book, I saw the relationship between individuals and society, modernity and modernity reflection.
From the beginning, the author raised his own questions.
1.( 1) What is the structure of a society as a whole? What are its basic components and what is the relationship between them? How is this structure different from other social orders? In this structure, what is the specific significance of the aspects that keep it changing?
(2) What is the status of this society in the long history of mankind? What is the driving force for its change? What is its position in the overall progress of human nature? What's the point? How does the specific part we are investigating interact with the historical period it will enter? What are the basic characteristics of that period? How is it different from other times? In what unique way does it build history?
(3) What kind of people are the mainstream in this period of society? What kind of people will gradually dominate the mainstream? Through what channels are these people selected, shaped, liberated and suppressed, thus becoming sensitive and dull? What kind of "humanity" does our behavior and personality observed in a particular society in this particular period reveal? What is the significance of "humanity" in the face of all sectors of society we have investigated?
Human history → our current era (or a certain period in history) → individuals.
If we look at our own era and some specific people in this era from a historical perspective, will we have a broader vision to know our own era, know the people in this era and ourselves, and have the ability to switch from one perspective to another?
2. The factors that hinder sociological imagination now and how to really have sociological imagination.
The form and content of bureaucracy have fully influenced the whole academic research model. The concrete embodiment of this view lies in the integration of "big theory" and "abstract empiricism" with bureaucratic logic. However, in addition to the grand theoretical method of "deduction with expectation" and the abstract empirical method of "stating problems and giving conclusions", there is also a "classic" research. There is no doubt that Mills advocates such a research method. For the first two, the development of social science either comes from "systematically processing empirical materials" or from "piecing together people's quilts"; For the latter, the development of social science is a "structured" process: on the one hand, it really depends on the accumulation of materials, on the other hand, it needs an organizational integration ability with "sociological insight". This ability is not a simple bureaucratic structure, but "deduction while building" and "combing all kinds of problems repeatedly and fully", which requires a clear understanding of the value and threat of problems, and a clear concern about the indifference of public problems and the anxiety of personal troubles. This study of "classic style" relies on the imagination of sociology.
Under the background of this era, if we want to have the imagination of sociology and admit the existence of "diversity", from the individual (micro) level, everyone has different ways of thinking and principles of doing things; From the perspective of society, culture or different historical periods (macro), different countries, cultures, classes, etc. Due to various factors such as history and geography, it also shows different characteristics. On the basis of acknowledging diversity and trying to understand diversity from multiple angles, we can start collecting empirical materials. Mills emphasizes the research orientation of rationality and freedom.
How should we imagine this society?
I think we should first have a humble heart, look around us, look at all kinds of things in this society, "Being is reasonable", and then look at our thinking process with a rational attitude to ensure that we are really doing practical and effective research on a problem. We should accept our own topics with a free and open attitude, not only to perfect a scientific system or prove a grand theory, but also to learn to find the points of interest from empirical materials, and gradually form our own theories through repeated description and deduction, construction and deconstruction.