Explore "The Sociological Imagination" by C. Wright Mills on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
What are the major issues for publics and the key troubles of private individuals in our time? To formulate issues and troubles, we must ask what values are cherished yet threatened, and what values are cherished and supported, by the characterizing trends of our period. In the case both of threat and of support we must ask what salient contradictions of structure may be involved.
When people cherish some set of values and do not feel any threat to them, they experience well-being. When they cherish values but do feel them to be threatened, they experience a crisis-either as a personal trouble or as a public issue. And if all their values seem involved, they feel the total threat of panic.