Explain briefly how C. Wright Mills’s work is comparable to the critical theorist tradition.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In America, the sociologist who most took up the charge of the critical theorists was C. Wright Mills. Committed to a vision of a more just and moral society, he was throughout his career a relentless critic of the self-congratulatory hypocrisy that in his view pervaded American culture. In White Collar (1951), Mills turns his attention to the plight of the American middle classes who, owing to their “status panic,” are unable to realize a meaningful existence. Not one to avoid controversy, Mills turned his critical outlook on onto his own peers. His classic introduction to sociology, The Sociological Imagination (1959), not only offers the definitive statement on the task of the discipline; it also reproaches those who are charged with carrying it out.