Cover; Contents; Preface; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1 -- Sociology,or Imaginative Reflections from Empirically Damaged Life; Part I -- Developing an Orientation to Self and Society; Chapter 2 -- The Big Picture,or a Brief Survey of Our Dying World; Chapter 3 -- The Small Picture,or Yesterday's Dystopias as Today's Everyday Life; Chapter 4 -- Toward a Postmodern Sociological Imagination and a Sociological Imagination for Postmodern Times; Part II -- Applying the Sociological Imagination: Three Models; Chapter 5 -- A Wrong Child: Analyzing the Unanalyzable; Chapter 6 -- Generation X: A Phantom Subject
Chapter 7 -- Religion and Society: Of Gods and DemonsPart III -- The Social Forces Working against the Sociological Imagination; Chapter 8 -- The Degradation of the Public Sphere; Chapter 9 -- The End of History; Chapter 10 -- Sociology without Society; Part IV -- Looking Back,Looking Ahead; Epilogue: Sociology as Critical Theory of Society; A Personal Note; Index
Summary
This book is intended as an accessible, current, and uncompromised introduction to what C Wright Mills called the sociological imagination. It explains and demonstrates the value of the sociological imagination vis-[gr]a-vis the demands of today's postmodern society, critically addresses the chief forces working against its development, and invites students to adopt this form of self-consciousness as their own
