Explore "The Sociological Imagination" by C. Wright Mills on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In itself all this is nothing to upset one; it is widely acknowledged, even when it is not confronted. Nowadays social research is often of direct service to army generals and social workers, corporation managers and prison wardens. Such bureaucratic use has been increasing; no doubt it will continue to increase. Studies are also used-by social scientists and by other people-in ideological ways. In fact the ideological relevance of social science is inherent in its very existence as social fact. Every society holds images of its own nature-in particular, images and slogans that justify its system of power and the ways of the powerful. The images and ideas produced by social scientists may or may not be consistent with these prevailing images, but they always carry implications for them. In so far as these implications become known, they usually come to be argued over-and used:
By justifying the arrangement of power and the ascendancy of the powerful, images and ideas transform power into authority.