The Sociological Imagination

In contrast with the preceding chapters, here Mills highlights positive sociology trends and development. He defines “proper” social science as focusing on “the human variety, which consists of all the social worlds in which men have lived, are living, and might live” (132).

For Mills, one positive aspect of sociologists’ work is their identification of an adequately general unit of analysis for human societies: the nation-state. As Mills writes:

The nation-state is now the dominating form in world history and [...] a major fact in the life of every man [...] all the institutions and specific milieux in which most men live their public and private lives are now organized into one or the other of the nation-states [...] In choosing the national social structure as our generic working unit, we are adopting a suitable level of generality: one that enables us to avoid abandoning our problems and yet to include the structural forces obviously involved in many details and troubles of human conduct today. Moreover, the choice of national social structures enables us most readily to take up the major issues of public concern (135).

By adopting the nation-state as the general level of analysis, social scientists are better equipped to study society as a whole.