THE PROMISE

THE PROMISE

Reading the classic essay by C. Wright Mills

http://www.lclark.edu/~goldman/socimagination.html

The Trap Mills says that the lives of

people may feel like traps because they do not recognize the impact of history and society on their lives

Individuals may blame themselves for situations which are the outcome of macroscale processes

The Sociological Imagination

The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals.

Individual experience the effects of historical events in varying ways.

They may be unaffected or intensely affected, they may have their world view changed or changing circumstances may change their world

The Intersection of History and Biography

… it is by means of the sociological imagination that men and women now hope to grasp what is going on in the world, and to understand what is happening in themselves as minute points of the intersections of biography and history within society.

The Dust Bowl History is about what

people did in the past, but those actions are often based on changes that are beyond the control of humanity.

In the case of the dust bowl agricultural traditions aggravated a climatological change.

Siegfried Schubert of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues used a computer model developed with modern-era satellite data to look at the climate over the past 100 years. The study found cooler than normal tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures combined with warmer tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures to create conditions in the atmosphere that turned America's breadbasket into a dust bowl from 1931 to 1939. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0319dustbowl.html

More than the weather changed

Changes

Farmers had adopted new and powerful machines to work the soil But they didn’t change the way they managed the

soil from the less invasive equipment of the past. The result was that more damage was done, more

land was stripped of vegetation, the soil was loosened to a greater depth and when the climate underwent a long variation the soil was exposed, and simply blew away

It wasn’t only environmental change

Farming was already fading as a way of life for many people.

Those who could not afford the new machinery were being forced out

Those who stayed on were in debt for the very equipment that worsened the disaster

Young people were moving to urban areas To find work in the factories To find a new way of life To get better education To adopt new ways of

thinking, talking and even dressing

The economy was changing as a result of the Industrial Revolution

The changes were part of history Which questions does

Mills ask which would be answered by these facts?

How might relations between people, organizations and within families be changed by these historical developments?

How would people have to change their lives to survive?

Would everyone be affected the same way?

Would some people be able to go on with minimal impact in their own daily lives?

The intersection Biography

Biography is our life story.

Our personal stories contribute to the overall sense of the times in which we live.

At the same time our biographies are shaped by the times in which we live.

There is an age old question Do the times make the

man or does the man make the times?

Mills would say that both are true in that history changes our individual possibilities and as we adapt and adjust the society changes in response.

Woody GuthrieI ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.And the police make it hard wherever I may goAnd I ain't got no home in this world anymore. My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;Rich man took my home and drove me from my doorAnd I ain't got no home in this world anymore. Was a-farmin' on the shares, and always I was poor;My crops I lay into the banker's store.My wife took down and died upon the cabin floor,And I ain't got no home in this world anymore. Now as I look around, it's mighty plain to seeThis world is such a great and a funny place to be;Oh, the gamblin' man is rich an' the workin' man is poor,And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.

http://www.geocities.com/Nashville/3448/iaint.html

John Steinbeck

"Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one."

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Steinbeck/grapes.html

Lives were changed

John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie are two of the millions of lives that were changed by the great depression. Find someone in their 80’s who grew up in the

depression, ask them about their childhood and then ask them about the changes they’ve seen in society since.

Do you think you’ll see similar changes? How do changes affect the way we understand our

experiences and interpret those of others?

Is it a personal problem… How do we know that the consequences of our

behavior are not completely of our own making? How much responsibility does each person have for

the choices they make? Ultimately we all have to make choices, some will have

better, and some worse, outcomes for us. We have to take responsibility for our choices.

Mills says that ultimately a personal problem is one which is mostly unique, in that few others have the same kind of problem.

Or a public issue?

The rules of the society and the historical circumstances can make some choices impossible. Most of the farmers displaced by the dust bowl were

not able to stay on their land because They could not pay their debts when crops failed because

of the weather They could not grow enough crop to survive even if they

owned their farms Mills says we can identify public issues because

we find many people in the same situation.

What is society to Mills?

Essentially society is the set of arrangements that people have made for interacting with each other and the material things we use.

Mills sees society as both enduring and fleeting Some parts of society are enduring, for example

economic and family systems Yet even within these the “day to day” events are

unique to the time and place and people involved.

History, Society, Biography We are each born to a society created by those older

than us to deal with the effects of their own history, and manage their collective biographies.

These arrangements seem permanent and natural to us, but they were negotiated bit by bit by our predecessors.

As society shapes the choices that shape our biographies we reshape history, and in doing so reshape our society; for some us our biographies will be the better for it, for others this might not be so.

What can sociology do?Sociology has an ameliorative character, as

does most science. There is a desire to find information and use it in a way that produces a desirable outcome.

The question is always “Desirable for whom?”Sociology provides information about what

the public issues are. It is up to the individuals in the society to

decide if and how they wish to address or change these large scale issues.