The Sociological Imagination

Mills addresses the virtues and limitations of what he terms the “grand theory” or grand theories of sociology, and takes Talcott Parsons’ work, The Social System, as its prime example. What are the virtues of these grand theories of sociological study? For Mills, these include the ability to describe the general process that maintains social order, and the way in which individuals find their place within a society.

Mills summarizes the shortcomings of such a theory as follows: “given this social equilibrium and all the socialization and control that man it, how is it possible that anyone should ever get out of line?” (32). For Mills, it is this latter question of social unrest’s actuality that characterizes the limitations of the grand theories of sociology in general, and the work of Talcott Parsons in particular. Mills details the reason for these limitations:

The basic cause of grand theory is the initial choice of a level of thinking so general that its practitioners cannot logically get down to observation. They never, as grand theorists, get down from the higher generalities to problems in their historical and structural contexts (33).

Or as he reiterates further on, “Claiming to set forth a “general sociological theory,” the grand theorist in fact sets forth a realm of concepts from which are excluded many structural features of human society, features long and accurately recognized as fundamental to its understanding” (35).

Mills spends the remainder of this chapter analyzing the distinction between “symbols of justification” (e.g. Locke’s “principle of sovereignty,” Rousseau’s “general will,” Durkheim’s “collective representations,” etc.) and the institutional structures of power to which they correspond (political government, economic mode of production, etc.). According to Mills, the limitations of Parsons’ analysis, and of grand theories in general, is that it envisions ‘symbols’ or the ideals of a given society as being more important and having a greater power of determining society, than the economic strata or political actors of that society. The outcome of this is the notion that “symbols are thus seen as ‘self-determining’” (38). However, says Mills, it is quite the opposite: “Unless they justify institutions and motivate persons to enact institutional roles, ‘the values’ of a society, however important in various private milieu, are historically and sociologically irrelevant” (38). Lastly, says Mills, contra Parsons’ theory which argues that social order arises from the alignment of social integration and social equilibrium:

Most occidental societies [...] involve various mixtures of legitimation and coercion [...] Even in such sacred little groups as families, the unity of ‘common values’ is by no means necessary: distrust and hatred may be the very stuff needed to hold a loving family together. A society as well may of course flourish quite adequately without such a ‘normative structure’ as grand theorists believe to be universal (40).

Mills takes up another dominant sociological trend—abstracted empiricism—and proves its limited analytical scope. As Mills defines it:

Like grand theory, abstracted empiricism seizes upon one juncture in the process of work and allows it to dominate the mind. Both are withdrawals from the tasks of the social sciences. Considerations of method and theory are of course essential to work upon our tasks, but in these two styles they have become hindrances: the methodological inhibition stands parallel to the fetishism of the Concept (50).

In other words, just as grand theories misconstrue the relationship between the part and the whole, whereby the whole and the part can only be conceived as consonant and consistent with each other, abstracted empiricism confuses the relationship between the part and the whole whereby a particular aspect of society gains an exaggerated emphasis, thereby overestimating its function and degree of influence within the whole of society. As Mills writes, abstracted empiricism falls prey to its chosen methodology, as it persistently avoids “problems of structure in favor of those of milieux” (61).