On the sociological imagination

Abstract

This article discusses the controversy of the sociological imagination as it was developed by Charles Wright Mills and its relevance for the current epistemology of social science. His notion of the sociological imagination has several problems due to the unreflected general prejudice distinguishing between structure and subjectivity, which creates from sociology a kind of social metaphysics. As a result, social context is conceptualised as an unproblematic domain used for the rationalisation of an actor's behaviour and knowledge, and the sociological imagination gives the sociologist an absolute critical position which situates him paradoxically in the name of justice and freedom against humanity.