The Sociological Imagination

“The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise” C. Wright Mills

Photo by Lance Anderson on Unsplash

This is a key work in the sociological literature and provides a way of thinking about our experiences as individuals in society at any given point in time. The argument is that to fully understand ourselves we have to apply the ‘sociological imagination’ to our ‘personal troubles’.

The relevance for health is that this takes us beyond making overly simplistic analysis of our health behaviours, experiences and decisions. If our analysis is too simplistic then we come up partial answers to health care issues at best and irrelevant, judgemental or dangerous answers at worst.

C Wright Mills wrote:

‘…men (sic) do not usually define the troubles they endure in terms of historical change…’ (p3).

So, what is a ‘trouble’?  That might be an episode of illness.

We may not consider that our issues (as personal troubles) are better or more fully understood as being linked to living in the 21^st century, or that the roots may lie in current society. We are

‘…seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history.’ (p4).

We do not

‘…possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history…’  (p4).

In addition we:

‘…cannot cope with their personal troubles in such ways as to control the structural transformations that lie behind them.’  (p4).

What ‘structural transformations’ might be behind living alone, diabetes, weight gain and money worries?

What is a ‘structural transformation?’

If we think of society has having ‘structures’, which vary from society to society and which varies within the same society over time (history), we may begin to understand that society is but the outcome of individuals, groups, communities and populations deciding to act out their relationships one with another. In doing so they create (and are created by) society and its social ‘structures’. We have family structures, gender role structures, work organisation and employment structures, educational structures, health care delivery structures, food manufacture, marketing and delivery structures, economic structures…..  A commonly experienced social structure today is the baking or buying and eating of cake and coffee as a social event. In response to, or perhaps to encourage this, we now have both small businesses in town centres and global corporations (Nestle, Starbucks, Costa Coffee) oriented to selling us high calorie non essential  food and drink.

Relationships between people evolve as humans live their lives and develop their capacities and these relationships then act as structural patterns for others to follow. This process of ‘evolution’ and ‘pattern’ changes over time and between societies. An individual thus is both shaped by these (structural) patterns of living, and in living their lives they in turn shape the patterns (structures). Our lives are thus ‘structured’ but not determined by these structures.

What social structures are there and what are those structures that lie beneath the personal troubles outlined above?

To help answer that question Wright Mills argued that

“what they need…is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and of what may be happening within themselves… this quality…(is) the sociological imagination.” (p5).

What information do we have about Type 2 diabetes – its rate, prevalence, risk groups, epidemiology, aetiology, and the wider determinants? To fully understand why anyone now has Type 2 we need to get this information and consider for example that:

We might be ‘overweight’. What exactly does that mean and how much of an issue is it? The fact that we might now have type 2 diabetes suggests that previous diet, levels of exercise and lifestyle may have contributed. What do we know about weight gain and the link to diabetes?

Our personal story of being overweight is linked to various structural and technological changes in society over our lifetime. These changes include the abundance of fossil fuels to use for energy (a technological change) instead of food, so that cars replace cycling/walking. Active travel is replaced by driving, while the social meaning of driving and car ownership underpin our unwillingness to cycle, walk to the bus stop or railway station.

So, to what degree are we responsible for gaining this weight? Many of us have lived through a time when the public’s understanding of diet was perhaps rudimentary, constrained as it was by rationing and availability and the social norms that construct a ‘healthy’ diet. Many of us experienced ‘socialisation’ which involves learning the values, norms and beliefs of our culture regarding what is appropriate food. To what degree is  vegetarianism, veganism or the mediterranean diet, popular and or promoted as healthy option?

We need to consider what a healthy diet is and how the public get to know. Currently the eatwell plate is a suggestion, but to what degree do the public know about it, how much are they guided by it and what is the evidence base for it? We might want to consider if there are any vested interests in selling us high calorie, sugar dense foodstuffs?

Exercising a sociological imagination also asks what social changes occurred so that we have now an abundance of sugar in the form of high fructose corn syrup?

Our early lives would have been guided by social norms and what shops could provide, as well as cost. the ‘personal trouble’ is weight gain but it is also a public issue as the whole UK population has gained weight. So we need to connect changes in social structures and historical events to the personal story that is a diagnosis of diabetes, to fully understand current health.

The role of sugar in the diet is an issue, what is the history of the dietary advice regarding fat and sugar? We may well have been consuming sugar in amounts that seems normal and indeed is hidden. This could be part of what is called an ‘obesogenic environment’ in which we are immersed and have been for several decades. What do we believe and think about sugar in the diet? To what degree does rational thinking about the risk to weight from eating a ‘normal’ UK diet, feature in buying, cooking and meal preparation decisions?

‘The sociological imagination enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life….’ (p5).

This is what Wright Mills refers to when he argued that:

‘The first fruit of this imagination…is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of all those individuals in his circumstances’ (p5).

Wright Mills outlines:

‘The personal troubles of milieu and the public issues of social structure’. (p8).

Troubles:

These occur within the individual’s immediate experience and relationships. They relate to the individual self and to those areas of social life of which the individual is immediately, directly and personally aware. The description of what the trouble is and what the solutions are, come from the individual and within the scope of their ‘social milieu’. A trouble is a private matter; they are values that we feel are threatened.

One of our personal troubles may be feeling and living alone and feeling that whatever we does makes no difference (learned helplessness). The value being threatened here is the value of social relationships being missed.

Public Issues:   

These are matters that go beyond the local environment of the individual and their inner life. They result as an ‘organisation’ of many such situations into the structure and institutions of society. The countless individual social milieux (i.e. ‘all the lonely people’ in the UK) overlap and create society at points in history. An issue is a public matter; issues threaten values held by the public. When this happens there may be public debate about what that value is and what really threatens it. There is some evidence that loneliness is becoming a public issue as the scale of the issue becomes clearer and its health effects become known.

One of Wright Mill’s examples to explain the use of the sociological imagination is unemployment:

‘When…only one man is unemployed, that is his personal trouble, and for its relief we look to the character of the man, his skills and his immediate opportunities. When…15 million…are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find the solution within the range of opportunities open to any one individual. The very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of society and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals’. (p9).

What the individual unemployed man (out of the 15 million) experiences is often caused by the structural changes in society. When global economics means that steel can be produced more cheaply in a foreign country (a structural change) then a UK steel works shuts down. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it, is to be able to trace links among a great variety of individual social milieu which, as Wright Mills’ states, ‘…is to possess the sociological imagination’ (p11).

There is more than one person who lives alone, is overweight, struggling with diabetes and has money worries. Therefore these personal troubles are also public issues of society if we use the sociological imagination.

To fully understand our life means understanding how society has changed and the opportunities and threats to health that arise as a consequence. It means understanding that our personal agency, the freedom to act, operates within particular social structures that constrain action as well as providing enablements. So, what constrains our action, what enables us to take control of our lives?

Understanding obesity using the sociological imagination links the personal trouble of weight gain with the public issue of whole population shifts in BMI within the context of the obesogenic environment. A fuller understanding of ‘fatness’ goes beyond overly simplistic calculations of calories in = calories out type equations, and simplistic exhortations to “eat less move more”.

Implications:

Health and illness is to be thought as arising from social structure as well as, if not more than, biology. The knowledge that diabetes results not just from the individual’s choice of diet, but also from the social environment, should indicate a  public health and socio-political role. Health education is not just an individually focused issue, based on a biomedical understanding. Health itself has social origins. The concept of an ‘obesogenic environment’ suggests just that.

Therefore strategies that will assist people to move towards health must take into account the social and political context in which they live. Society has to change as much as the individual. Individualised models for change that ignore this will have less chance of success.

Understanding that illness, although at first may seem self-inflicted and out of free will, may result from the social milieu of the individual.  Victim blaming of the unpopular patient, the obese, the self-harmer, the drug addict, the alcoholic, is not only poor practice but is theoretically myopic. That is to say it does not understand the wider determinants of health. This realisation should change the language around health into a more open, less judgemental stance towards the people. For example, the label alcoholic implies the trouble lies within the individual when the roots may also be social.

To summarise: 

• Health and Illness both derive from socially structured human agency, societal as well as biology.
• The patterns, experience and causes of health and illness has to be understood in the context of history and culture.
• The meanings that people attach to health and illness not only are built by social structure but go towards creating social structures.
• Professionals need to acknowledge the complexity of health and illness and adopt a more open, non judgmental viewpoint.
• There is a social/political and public health role.
• Models for change have to go beyond individualised biomedical understandings of health and illness, realising that ‘education’ is not a universal panacea.

Benny Goodman      September 2017